CSB 292: To Hit Armor Vibe Zero

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Nasamana Imotep.

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Good.

Good.

So,

where was I?

Yes.

I don't know.

I have invented.

What I believe I have invented some brand new tech that this morning

I can't believe I didn't think of earlier.

So if this is true.

Yeah, but at the very least, it solved a problem that I had for a while now.

So I used to have a pillow that was a super like puffy, you know, really, really soft kind of like

floofy pillow, the kind that your head really sinks into.

Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, another time.

Yeah.

And that was nice for a while, but after a certain point, I was like, I need a little bit more rigidity, right?

Like, yeah, okay, I need something to kind of hold it up, especially because I tuck my dreads sometimes,

you know, into a place where I can kind of rest my head there.

So, oh, okay.

Um, yeah, it's pretty useful, actually.

Like, if I have a solid, before we continue, I need to ask you like a really basic question:

Are you a back sleeper, a stomach sleeper, or a side sleeper?

I spin

you spin, I rotate, yeah.

Oh,

and this is crucial to what uh I've I've discovered today.

So, okay,

what I eventually switched from being a like super duper fluffy kind of like pillow to something like still soft, but kind of flatter.

And that was nice, but I realized the exact height I wanted was the flatter but still soft pillow, but times two.

So I got two of them and I've stacked them.

I used to sleep with that.

Yeah.

For decades.

Exactly, right?

Two really flat pillows.

Yes.

That was ultimately exactly what I wanted.

And it was the right distance from my head to my shoulder so that when I side-slept, my head was fully supported.

It wasn't tilting too much one way or the other.

It was nice and straight.

And then when I was on my back, I could, like, you know, same thing, right?

Everything's nice.

So, two pillows kind of worked.

That exact height was really great.

Of course, the biggest problem with pillows a lot of the time is the temperature, right?

You never get that consistent temperature.

So,

what I did recently was I took the two pillows

and I folded them taco style

and I put them like vertically next to each other.

Right.

And so what that did is it creates the same length from bed to top because it's the double, it's a double.

But what happened is I'm rolling on one, I'm on one side, I'm facing like left.

And I'm like feeling comfortable.

And then last night I rolled over to the right and I had a fresh, cool pillow unwarmed by the other.

I need a clearer visual description.

Okay, gotcha.

It's not.

You can't see it.

A revolution happened in my brain.

Okay, so let's actually use numbers, right?

Let's say a long time ago, I used a pillow that had a height of fluffiness of like 20 or so.

Yeah, okay.

And that was too much, right?

What I actually want to feel comfortable is a height of like 10.

So I ended up getting two pillows that are height five,

right?

And then I put them on top of each other, and then that was perfect, right?

The only problem is that your pillow gets hot, and you have to flip it down.

Yeah, so you have to flip it around, put the under one on top, and shit like that.

And fit like that, right?

And I'm like, yeah, and flipping it around and stuff, you know, and

I get like,

I don't enjoy that process.

It's annoying.

So what I did was I took the pillows that were stacked on top of each other and I rotated them 90 degrees so so that they're like vertical, right?

And it's okay.

So, you mean like you're sleeping on like a tall L?

No, no, no.

Like a lowercase L.

No, no, no.

Take the two pillows on top of each other.

Now rotate 90 degrees.

So now they're going.

So they're facing vertical instead of horizontal.

Yeah, now they're vertical.

Now they're lengthwise, right?

Okay.

And then separate them so that they're side by side with each other.

Okay.

And then fold them in half in the middle so that now you have the exact same thickness and

surface area as the other.

But how do you keep it from flopping down?

It doesn't.

The material is.

Oh, it's it's it's not

the material stays in place.

Yeah.

So you're sleeping in an ass crack.

You've created an ass crack to sleep in.

And my head is on one cheek, though.

It's not the crack.

Yeah, okay.

And then I spoke, and then I rotated to the other side, facing the other way, because I rotate when I sleep.

And then the other side was cold immediately and comfortable immediately and the temperature doesn't go between the two and i was like i have the the exact same setup except now there's a separation which means the temperature regulation is is fantastic so i am leaning on the the left ass cheek and i rotate over to the right one and it's great

And people make fun of me for sleeping in my square.

That's fine.

But ultimately,

the result here is it's

it's the same volume, right?

It's the same surface area, except because the division is in the middle instead of horizontal across, now it's vertical.

And that means that like you essentially have two pillows of the same size you can sleep on.

And because I spin, and that's crucial here, because if you're a middle sleeper that's on your back the whole time, you might not like the groove in the middle, right?

But because I go from left to right and then on top and back and forth, I've been able to just get a perfect temperature regulation going.

How long have you been doing this?

I last night, discovered it for the first time.

Oh, just last night?

Because for me, like, I kind of get it.

Like, me, when I had the two pillows set up, I would just bring the bottom pillow up on top.

But, like, my only real question is, like,

if I'm rolling around, I'm rolling around like significantly.

Like, are you not worried that you'll just end up with no pillow by sliding between the cheeks?

It didn't happen.

And I believe as well that, like, I'm probably 80% side sleeping one way or the other and then 20% on my back.

So that 80% is going left and right.

Sometimes fully one way or the other.

But a lot of that.

But I spin.

I don't stay still.

And because I spin, there's a lot of temperature fuckery that happens that feels bad because I'm like, ah, I want it cold.

So I have to do a lot of pillow flipping to stay cool, you know?

And this just kind of completely gets rid of that.

And I'm

pretty psyched, pretty stoked that it took my entire life to figure this out.

Yeah.

And yes,

it does resemble that.

That's fascinating.

It does resemble.

Did you sleep better?

I did.

I was great.

Well, then, good.

Yeah.

And it does resemble an ass, I suppose, now that we're thinking about it.

But...

Well, the main thing is, you know.

Is the open part at the top or the bottom?

Top.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, no, that's a butt cheek.

Yes.

Because the bend at the bottom is like fits nicely into your neck, like, you know, kind of groove.

Right.

So your head is resting, and then you want that little bump to just be right there.

You don't want to have the, yeah, the pillowcase opening and all that shit facing you down towards the bottom of the bed.

That sucks.

So there you go.

Well, I'm more interested in hearing about this next week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because like it needs some time.

One good night's sleep

is like, that's that's nice, but like let's see if let's see if like no inopportune problems occur.

Yes, this is true.

Also, it is also the first night returning to my bed after cabin bed, right?

So

I'm happy to be back in my own bed as well.

I used to have sleep problems.

I would have lots of nights where I couldn't sleep.

And then me and Paige had this great idea.

Sleep problems.

where we took every sleep problem we've ever heard and transformed it into a person who now contains all of our sleep problems separate from our own bodies.

Yes, right.

Yes.

You

embodied it and cast the spell.

Cool.

Because now, when I'm like, I'm going to go take a nap in the middle of the day and I put my fucking head down,

I'm done, man.

Gone.

Yeah.

No, that sleeper that, I mean, I've always been a really heavy sleeper and I've always been like particularly efficient at, so I could sleep standing up, sleep on the bus, sleep on my way to work.

I've talked about that.

Yeah, you would always be the you would, whenever we would go anywhere, you would always be the person who was willing to take the hit and be like, guys, I can sleep in anything.

If there's literally nowhere left to sleep, I'll take the floor.

Literally, yeah.

And it was very like incredibly magnanimous of you.

It, I just don't take a debuff from it.

I feel okay in the morning.

It's like, I'm like, it's fine.

But, um,

yeah, and so, and I know that like, if I have a day where there's like working out involved or some shit, like I am corpsing the second I sit down in any way, shape, oh yeah.

So yeah, no, that's um I imagine that baby just has a fucking field of

there's a real

there's a really specific aura of having the child,

which is

like

the most exciting thing in the world is going to bed.

Like,

like,

and then the child can stop you because every now and then they go through the sleep regression and there it's like 11:30 and they're like, I'm so awake.

And you're like, Come on, man.

I can't, we can't go to sleep until you're asleep.

It's, I'm, oh, come on.

Come on.

Though we're quite lucky, he rarely does that.

Um,

Punchbob had a friend who had a pretty, speaking of tech a pretty solid um thing i've never seen before but it's uh

her mom her friends uh is a mom and what she has been using is basically a belt with a platform on it and it's just a little rest for the baby to sit on so that you can do things one-handed while baby sits oh yeah yeah on a shelf attached to you I've got one of those.

Yeah, it's incredible.

Yeah, well, I don't have the side one.

I have the

one that goes on the front.

Okay.

So like the, you know, like the baby backpack or the baby fanny pack.

It's not a papoose, but it's like a platform, like a little.

Yeah, for a while,

I would use that

when he was a little smaller.

But now, now that he's a proper toddler, there's a better place for him, and that's just right over the shoulder.

Okay.

Just being hauled like a sack of potatoes.

Yeah, okay.

You are an item into the inventory you go.

Or like underneath the arm, again, like a sack of potatoes.

But yes.

So

I did have a week.

You did?

I did have a week that led up to me

figuring out this

butt pillow tech.

Tell me about your week, Wooly, from Wooly vs.

Well, first things first.

Promised consort, Radon.

So...

So, like, all jokes aside, I did that shit post of, like, congrats beating him now.

He was harder before.

Even now.

It's it's definitely the farthest they've ever pushed it.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

Like, we've been saying that.

So, okay.

I think the first, like there's a moment when these tough super challenges, like the moment it tipped over from like, oh my god, that's a lot.

And wow, I can't believe how hard it is into, okay, wait, what the fuck is from soft thinking?

I think the orphan of cost was that moment.

The orphan, orphan was, was, orphan was the line where everyone was like,

you may have gone too far in a few places.

Yeah, like, actually, guys, what are we doing?

Right?

And yeah.

And like, there is, I have personally retconned a headcanon for Orphan of Cause

that makes me appreciate him more, which is I've always like, what is the deal with Orphan?

Why is Orphan so bad?

And it's because Orphan ignore Orphan does not have a secret stamina bar like every other boss has.

There's that.

And I was like, oh, that's interesting that this specific enemy does not follow the correct rules of the world he is placed in,

which is appropriate for his character.

I would also say that the animations are not like logical.

You know, like you can't follow them the way you follow a big guy with a sword.

Or, you know, even like, okay, stuff like Bloodstarved Beast and like, and so early on kind of fucked you up by like trying to predict the animations, but the thing itself makes no sense, you know?

And Orphan is absolutely a non-intuitive thing in the way it flails at you.

So

that too is like fucking you up.

Now let's move on to Promised Consort Radon,

who is

a very

normal character to fight.

They're the correct size for a Fromsoft antagonist.

They have swords.

They have some spells.

Like they are the one-on-one Virgil kind of thing that we talk about.

And then you hit phase two,

and then you start fighting a bleach character.

Like,

just

every conceivable.

Like,

the joke about Elden Ring characters holding up their swings for too long to catch your roles

is now embellished in a character, sorry, embodied in a character that will just have phantoms attack you five times in a row as part of their slash with the fake outs and then there's that and then there's the part where almost like um how you know like fume might fume night not fume night um

um

god the the first like fire knights there in in in with the fire gut that like you can't stand close to them or you're taking fire damage in ds2 oh smelter smelters right the smelter and the delter demons well we're

not smelter and skelter or helter no smelter and delter helter smelter

helter all right well anyways, so the idea here now is: not only should you be avoiding

the swing in the correct direction, but you cannot be anywhere inside of the

attack box of the attack because after it's done, the fucking flashbangs go off, you know?

So I have to ask, did you go back and look at what the visuals on those attacks look like a couple months ago?

No.

They are.

You should go check it out.

the beams that would come off his regular strikes and the gigantic AoE and the

Those those lights had their intensity decreased about like 300% I heard I heard they were blind and

The one that was really outrageous is that when he would do the the teleporting like flash enemy version like the phantom attacks

those things would also fire off lights

when they did it.

Yeah, okay.

That's the thing, right?

Attacking you visually, just like with blindness is just insane because that still happens.

Apparently it was worse too, on his one Bloodflame attack, right?

Yeah.

That little bit of Moog that he does.

Like that slash explodes and it lingers in the air so long that the next thing he does is obfuscated.

There was one of his

like, I think his cross attack.

Okay, yeah, the dog.

And even if you blocked it perfectly in his old version, there was nothing that had time to swing on him before he hit you with another thing.

Like, just all sorts of things that were

unfinished.

There was an interview with Miyazaki.

Oh, sorry, after you.

Oh, no, just I was going to say, a lot of those attacks,

you go like, okay, well, Old Faithful says what?

Step one is pick a cardinal direction and see if you can roll in

that direction.

And some of those directions end up just being the wrong guess every single time.

And then it's like, and then after that, pick another direction to roll in to avoid the light.

And there's a couple of the attacks where I'm kind of like,

I have not found the solution.

So the answer will be kill him before he does this thing too many times because it's just going to be a free sip trade.

There was an interview with Miyazaki in which he says that the final boss of Shadow of the Erd Tree is about as far as they can push the game's difficulty with the system they have created.

And interesting.

I am in large agreement that that is as far as the lock-on and R1, R2 Dodge roll system can manage.

It is, he is out of control.

Yeah, I mean, there's, they're like when you have sequences of eight swings and each swing has an after effect, so it's ultimately 16 attacks in a row.

Um, and your room to get your one attack in is like you get one and then he's immediately into another sequence.

You know, it's like, what is the DPS race here?

There is no DPS race.

You just get one.

And then you've taken the factor as well where it's like, all right, so what about doing the plot, right?

You can call in

Sir Ansbach and Theolier.

That's a trap.

And Theolier is so useless that he dies and he makes the life bar go up and he doesn't do enough damage or pull focus long enough to be worth it.

So the the way that I pulled it out was

I was using the biggest sword I could get my hand on.

Yeah.

The Krag Blade, that giant triangle rock blade from one of

the forges.

Okay.

And I was using the,

I forget its name.

The blocking tier, the perfect parry tier.

Oh, yeah.

The second row tier.

Yeah, yeah.

The hard tier or so.

Yes, yes, yes.

Right.

So I was using that.

And

I got really, really, really good at that first phase.

Because

if you can perfect carry deflecting hard tear, if you can do the deflecting hard tear on his regular swings,

at the end of his sequence, you get a counter-attack.

And if your weapon's really big, it does like a pretty good amount of damage.

Yes, I actually, same.

So phase one, I have pretty far, I have pretty down pat as well.

Honestly, like what I did was I just turned this into the Moog boss fight for me, right?

I got the exact same vibe out of it where it's like, okay, how appropriate.

Exactly.

Like phase one is is just, I know your, I know your pattern, I know your moves, I know everything, and I can do this cleanly.

The only thing that's going to get me every once in a while is that one roll catch combo where the timing is just off, where it starts up a little too fast, and then the second swing lingers a little too long, you know, and it kind of like the first hit lets you panic long enough to eat the second.

Um, but otherwise, yeah, phase one, absolutely clean, you know.

Um, and so I got to this place where it's like, so I'm into phase two, and I'm just like, oh my, oh my god, like, oh, holy fucking shit.

And

throwing down a summon increases his health by like fucking 25%.

It seems like he is more affected than it than anybody else.

It's crazy.

It is super crazy how much life he gets each for the summon.

So my plan was, and the way that I managed it is

I

played the whole first phase

by myself.

And then once

phase two started to go crazy, I would pull out Mimic Tear only.

Okay, okay,

because I needed to get through the first phase as fast as possible

and do as much damage to phase two

before I increased his health because it increases by a percentage.

Yeah, Mimic Tear adds just like all the rest do, right?

Does that, if you call in the sisters, do they get two for one?

No, that count as one.

Okay, so yeah, 20.

Okay.

But like I, on my first couple of tries, I pulled in everybody all at once, and I was looking at a boss with 160.

Oh, it doesn't?

Mimic doesn't add anything?

Ooh.

Well, good then.

Well, interesting.

Well, Mimic never lasts to phase two if you summon him in phase one.

Okay.

Mine.

Yeah, no, mine, mine died.

And then like you throw, I threw a little scarlet rot pot on my shit in my pockets, you know what I mean?

Put a little fucking

anti-holy blessing and all that shit.

Um switching my build up to be a spellcaster and a faith incantation caster as well was interesting because like now I'm getting golden vow and the

lord's like holy resistance in there.

Holy resistance is big.

But all of this

And then again, phase one, you know, footwork, sliding and punching.

But imagine in any of those key moments where you get to the end of his combo and you can get your swing in, I throw my fucking fists out and you punch the gap between his legs because big, dumb humans always get whiffed on by punches.

It sucks.

It fucking sucks that that happens so constantly.

And fist.

Use the biggest weapon ever.

That's the solution.

Oh my god, man.

Use the biggest weapon.

Fists are finally good.

They're finally really, really good in this game.

And anytime a big boss with dumb legs just fucking, you just, you waft ball whiff at Sir Ontbach's face.

That's all you do.

You know?

Man, it bums me out.

So, but I did it anyway because I wanted to, you know, I needed to return to the old me.

So I put the fucking, the, the, the, the spike balls back on.

And yeah, I mean, it was.

So I ran through a sequence in which

I was had

phase one down

and it was down.

Yep.

And phase two was annihilating me to bits.

And so I was like, all right,

what can I change?

What do I have?

And I started like, what of this?

What of that?

What of this?

What of that?

What of this?

How quickly do you get there?

Because over the years in these games, right?

And here's the thing.

I give,

you taught me about

there's a moment in the fight where you go, stop.

I am not properly equipped.

I need to actually, don't just slam your head against this.

There's a point where you need to assess what you're actually walking in.

Yes.

Right.

Because skill can carry you the whole way through, and then hubris will gas you the fuck up.

But

I think I was about...

I was thinking I was at the part where I was like

getting 80% through phase one, maybe maybe an hour, like consistently, but I wasn't able to clutch out phase one super reliably.

And I was like,

my attempts are getting weaker, not better.

Right.

So let's see what I got.

I went to go get the fingerprint shield.

And that helps, but I was low on damage.

And I went for this and that and this and that and this and that.

And after swapping out a bunch of different weapon types,

redoing my stats, et cetera, I came to the conclusion that after like an hour of trying out different shit, that the thing that was working the best was the thing I fucking started with.

And so I went back to what I was doing, which was using the biggest sword I have and deflecting heart shield.

Okay.

Deflecting heart tear.

Okay.

Because I was going to say that like, I've heard that it turns out that

after years and years of fromsoft boss fights and like skill rolling and all that shit, we are now at a point where one of the most effective things that apparently you do is just sword and poke.

Shield and poke, rather.

Just stand there, block everything with...

That was

the fingerprint shield was

the one build that went in there.

People with the biggest shield in the game.

Gustav.

And we're like, yeah, it was pretty tough.

Wasn't too bad, though.

Because they could just block all his shit.

You get that Havel shield right before, you the fight starts, right?

Like you literally,

because you do fucking Michelomania, you know, in the room before, and then you get the full set, and you're like, okay, so you can just stand there and block it, which, you know, after years of fucking shield slander, it's hilarious that that's the case.

But yeah, no,

and so for me, what it was, the same thing.

You're like, you get into phase two, and you're like, oh, I'm not even close to having these dodge patterns down because of the lights and some of the attacks.

The lights are so bad.

So

it became about, yeah, master phase one and then two is just like put as much holy resistance on as possible.

Fucking throw a pot, you know, do what you can.

And in these moments where,

like, he lands a command grab on someone else or something, fucking cast like as many spells as possible and then just get in and do what you can, you know?

So I had, I think,

every time there was one of these fights, so to speak, there would always be that like, okay,

this is going to be rough for streaming.

Probably need to figure out how to do this off-stream and then can compile the best attempts and show people.

So that was Moog and that was Millennia, right?

And this time around, it was like, okay, well, because

I'm trying to...

get this done before the fucking weekend

we're just gonna we're just gonna do the stream the whole thing and

it was

two hours and then five hours of attempts.

Yeah, so you ran into the exact thing I described, whereas if you get there at the middle to end point,

there's no shot.

There's like, it's just, it's too much.

And walking in, so the other part that I learned after the fact was that I walked in with 16

shadow fragments instead of 20.

So I so I did it with 19.

Once you get over like 12, the percentile increases are like way less.

Oh, they don't stay consistently like.

No, no, no.

I can look it up, but it's a very, very like bell-curvy.

Okay.

Interesting.

Scaling.

Yeah.

It is also interesting that like, you know, the actual setup is one where

for anything to happen, you got to get command-grabbed twice, which I didn't end up doing, but I read about it after the fact, you know, that it's like, okay, you just eat a really slow, avoidable command-grab.

And

let's see, what do you see here?

Scooby Snap.

Yeah,

I sent you

the math on it.

Okay.

And you could see that around 12 or 13, there's like a break.

And then it starts to slow down really.

Because I guess they planned it to like, well, not everyone's going to find

all fucking 20.

That's hard.

Okay,

but yeah, so so that was kind of so in the end it was like you know what Ans back does his job and if he's doing well enough he can even help get that crumple in

Theolier is not worth the fucking 20% no theolier kind of sucks shit.

Yep, and

I would also say that like

I did an I did a bunch of solo attempts too, and I could see the pathway there.

It would take

a good bit longer, but I definitely feel like I could have pulled that off as well.

It would just have been an obnoxious amount of streaming time, I think, to do so.

But I felt it, you know, in the end,

it was

like, yeah, it was one of those, like, okay, so we always talk about fighting a god in their prime at their peak.

All right, here you go.

So here's the one.

I was thrilled.

I was absolutely thrilled because before the DLC came out,

I said that that's who I want for the final boss.

Okay, okay.

And I and like, so the whole time I was pointing at Anne Orlando in the stands

going like, that's what I want.

In his prime.

Because the base game goes way out of its way in every description to go, man, before Radon got sick, he was easily the strongest of all the demigods.

Let's see what fucking,

yeah.

Like, and like, yeah, no, it's like you always fight somebody who's run down or tired or broken or dead or, you know, whatever.

And now it's like...

Bigger, better, stronger than ever.

And.

And with an assist.

With an assist.

And here's the other bit.

As someone who really, like I said, my fucking heart went into that Moog fight.

That, like, I left that going, all right, I fucking love that boss.

That was my favorite experience with the game.

Even that getting a little bit of recognition here, where it's like, that's the Husk that's being piloted.

And as a result, there's that one little Bloodflame attack, you know, and the rhythm and pace of things are going,

are very reminiscent of that fight.

It's like, what a fucking, what a fun way to end that.

It is, it is a bit certainly like, once it's done, you do get that cutscene, and then you're like, well,

I don't know why I thought there would be more answers because I do feel that I'm like, I'm like, yeah, this is a fromsoft, right?

You're going to get your little bits here and there.

But what you do get is interesting enough that it recontextualizes and gives you just enough about all of the major players

that I felt satisfied by that.

You know, the journey was definitely like

it added, it added enough lore,

especially with that village.

It added enough lore that like you go into that.

I imagine the pacing of then leaving the shadow realm and going into that final fight being like, oh, you fucking hypocrite.

You are both complete stupid pieces of shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's quite interesting.

You know, your entire order is built on nonsense, lies, hypocrisy, and aliens.

And here's the thing, right?

If you're looking at it from the Michelle point of view, you're like, you're this naive child that never grew up, but your mind never grew up either.

You're still child in your logic.

And you're actually doing the anime thing of like holding on to childhood promises and treating them as real, you know, no matter what, how much, no matter what

Radon has to say about the matter after the fact, you're like, nah, though, but remember, we got it,

my, we got to do it my way.

And he's looking, obviously, at Marica and everything that she's, that she's set up and going like, yeah, that's terrible.

We got to replace this.

But like,

his thing is like, and then everyone will be happy because we just take away free will and you just, you have to love me.

And because everyone's never done anything.

It's a world of compassion.

it's all compassion and it's like you mean compassion that thing that you fucking discarded on the ground back there for we saw it we saw your compassion on the ground mickey

i think there's a lot of like amazing things going on with the failure of the villains ideals because

like I'm gonna make a perfect world.

Yeah.

I'm gonna do it.

You guys.

And it's like the instant you weren't forcibly controlling every single one of your followers, they all engaged in a fucking WrestleMania battle to the death.

Oh, yeah, brother.

It was like literally in context, like a week later.

They couldn't kill each other fast enough.

Yeah.

No, that's incredible.

And I also like the idea, too, that

he was super like and he was he's not wrong for looking at the golden order and what is there and hating it, right?

Because it sucks and it didn't work.

And also, he fucking hates outer gods, right?

The unalloyed needle, the thing that's like, get these fucking gods out of here.

Get their inner gods.

Screw it up.

My sister.

My sister's all gross with super AIDS.

Because of the outer gods.

All of it.

And my brother, Moog, he's all fucked up because of the blood stuff.

And he's weeping for Godwin and like all these things.

He absolutely hates the fact that the outer gods are just coming in and playing and influencing with everybody.

Fucking Marica herself, getting

with the greater will, is also subject to that.

So, like, he properly does hate that.

But, like, the replacement, of course, is we're going to build our own god with blackjacket hookers and an unbreakable infinite charm that everyone will be forced to love me, and then it'll be the green ending and mass effect.

Everyone can fucking

pass.

To go on from like, you know, the Mooglester has been

has beaten the allegations.

Mooglester's head.

The Micholester is out here Micholesting all over all of his brothers.

The Mickler.

Like, stop it.

Yeah.

Stop it.

Not great.

Not great.

Like, Radon is an unwilling participant in that fight.

So that's the bit is like, we don't get enough about his say in the matter.

We only hear Michelin.

He doesn't have one.

But here's what you have context clues clues of right um millennia who was in on the plan was sent to go fight him and then whisper in his ear yo don't forget about my bro

you know come on and then like and then poison i gotta kill you as part of the plan and he's like i'm not dying i'm not lying

um i saw somebody point out that the Michaela stuff leads you to wonder whether or not Millennia ever

had free will.

Yep, ever.

Yep.

Because he was charming her in the womb.

Born into it.

Literally sat there and waited for him to return and had nothing else going on

until

her discovery.

Her motivation just turns off and she becomes like a nothing person

without him.

And that wasn't even when he left.

That was when Moog just took him in the egg and peaced.

Like, just he cannot find brother, cannot find One-san.

It obviously changes the context of him being stolen away, too, because, like,

Melania would have been able to stop Moog.

Like, for sure.

Yes, if she can fight Radon to standstill, then that's the tier level.

No,

it's pretty.

I think you have enough there to see that, like, Radon not only did not lose, but then fucking held on and just like rotted away to the point where all of his disciples are like, man, that dude is so cool.

Can one of you put him out of his misery, please?

You know, and he's like, my horse, though.

And he's like, so I don't think he was down with the plan.

But in the end,

you get, and like,

no, and, and, and, um, the promised consort is not the star scourge, you know, forcing that soul into that body, which which also,

interesting bit.

Why Moog, right?

You have one, the fact that Moog is this like dedicated, loyal, brainwashed, you know, one, and we don't know where he would have been.

Would he have been like Ansbach, or would he have been, you know, somewhere in between with that dedication?

But either way, unwilling participant.

Well, like,

all the blood stuff is a direct result of America turning the Omen

race into a slave like genocide race.

Like if she had treated her kids not like shit, Moog wouldn't have gotten all blooded up.

Well, there's also the part where the formless mother stepped in, right?

And all the outer gods basically do is they find somebody salty enough and go, hey, I can use you.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Yeah, so

let me show you some cool shit.

You want some frenzy flame?

You want some blood flame?

You want some golden order?

Come over here and let fuck with you um i mentioned it i think two weeks ago and i said like i didn't i was like oh we're gonna get to the dlc i hope we meet some of the other gods like the outer gods i did not expect to literally encounter all of the outer gods or at the very least their like most chosen disciple yeah they're the representations at the very least are in um and I get to the end of that and I'm like, oh, I'm super strongly feeling very good about my decision to join up with Ronnie and be like, this shit needs to leave.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All of this shit needs to go.

No more divine influence, please.

That's the thing is, like, Michella, when you know he's trying to leave his shackles behind, you're like, that's a noble thing because Ronnie had similar aspirations, right?

Not being chained to your fate is a, is a, uh, a destiny, and not being chained to destiny is something that everybody can find nobility in.

But then when the answer is,

now the path is clear for us to rule, you know, you're like, ah, damn it, Mickey.

All right, well, you gotta go.

And no, I was just gonna say that the

with Moog, the fact that he's a fucking omen means that he's graceless, means that his corpse doesn't go back to the urn tree, means that that's the strongest body that didn't disappear to put Radon's body is so available, yeah.

You know, and that that lines up so perfectly because Margot would have been a decent choice as well, but oh, absolutely, but he's so how self-hating that he was given grace at the end, you know, so like even that omen that that the it that was around like was like, nah, that went the urchery way as well.

So he had to use the only cold body that he could, which happened to be one that was one of his disciples, you know.

Um,

yeah, yeah, yeah, really, really interesting and good lore bits there,

You know, not to mention all the America town stuff.

And

just in terms of like, you know, from soft fucking visual, shout outs to the big badass knight with the swords that you want to fight, but like

just a like, almost like

Buddhist god hanging off the shoulders with the hand up, you know, and then the cape of hair.

It's a really cool...

Yeah, Yeah, he's just like daddy chill, like the whole time.

Absolutely.

And like, here we are.

The final boss is gay marriage, and we need to defeat it.

You know, and if you turn your

back on it for too long, and that shit goes to space and comes nuking back down to the ground.

I think what's really interesting is that I think I can't remember when this was, but I feel like it was when I was closing in on the end of Elden Ring, and you had not started it yet.

And I said to you, I feel like, because I had just gotten through like the invisible platform section in the north where you're doing like corridor running on invisible platforms after you fall on off the edge.

And I'm like, I feel like this game is every trick they ever learned and every concept they've ever done being remixed and improved.

And

I look at

Radon and Mikola, and it is like a direct sequel to the Lothric Princes from Dark Souls 3.

I don't know if you remember those guys, but the

Larry, he was the guy that was on his knees, and then his little brother would hang off his neck, just like Mikola does.

But their thing was that they would teleport around.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, the weak brother, and the yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, and it's a direct sequel to that one.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

I love that fight.

I think that fight's great.

Okay, right.

yeah although again just this one um yeah they're like we got another one in us

yeah

this time the brothers kiss

this time gay marriage casts meteor

like let's go

oh man and uh yeah no that's great and i do like it is pretty nice too that's like okay odds box in it because it's just like sir radan get the fuck out of my master's body what the fuck it's nice to see you but come on you know and he's everything you wanted

Gideon the all-knowing to be.

You know, I'm like, oh, you're the cool old guy.

Fuck him.

I wanted you to be there at the fucking table.

And Theo, you know, for all the non-help he's adding, he's basically there because like Trina is like, yeah, could you go kill me for me?

Thanks.

You know, and you're like, okay, fair enough.

He's got his reasons to.

And

it's a cool bit because

you make it past

the Mickey Mania, you know, the Michelomania fight and all that.

And you just get that nice little

square off with all the NPCs you've met throughout

this thing.

I was expecting to fight them, but I was expecting a series of summon one-on-ones.

I did not know it was going to be just the fucking thing.

I don't know what I expected, but I did not expect a massive two-sided fight.

Everyone coming in in their right time and place.

It's like literally Royal Rumble.

Like the countdown timer goes brrrr and then Dane!

It's dry leaf Dane coming in.

You know, it was great.

Fantastic ending, really hype

finale to a really long piece of DLC.

Yeah.

Kind of crazy how big that DLC is.

Like, um, unreasonably so.

And not the crazy.

Like, it costs $53, so it's a full game, but it is a full game.

It's a game.

You know, I would like.

One Limbgrave.

It's one.

It's a one Limgrave-sized game.

Well, how when you put it side by side,

land and boss fight to boss fight, like pound for pound, when you compare it pound for pound with Demon Souls,

what does it

mean?

Right?

That's the question.

Like, is it 2.5?

Is it 2D?

Yeah.

You know?

It's a fucking full game.

Yeah, it's enormous.

It's ridiculous.

I don't think as well that should be the standard.

And I don't think that should be expected every time.

And I don't think that's the same thing.

Yeah, so now that you've gotten to the very end, you see that interview where they said, we think the next game is going to be smaller than Elden Ring because we don't think we can do a game that big again.

And I'm like, I don't think you can.

Nope.

You know,

you just did Armored Core.

No one had any problems with that.

That was fine.

Just you can do that if you need to.

Also, I don't want

another game that is this size again.

Yeah,

and I was kind of describing a little bit how, you know, over the years we've discussed the part where people are like...

games have, they ask you for the most unreasonable amount of

like assets put into them compared to any other medium.

And they ask you for a volume that is just like not reasonable at all by any other mediums comparison metric.

But

the like

the ask for the

ask ratio to the price point for like the amount of voice acting, the amount of writing, the amount of game design level,

even for a fromsoft where you're like, well, you guys are on top of the industry and you're doing really well because everyone loves what you make and it sells really well.

It's like, yeah, but that should not set a bar nor be considered a reasonable standard.

Like, this should not be the norm.

It's just too much.

Please, please, please scale it back for your own sakes.

You have to.

Because, like...

If this had been anything other than a slam dunk, oh, I'd get in trouble.

And you just, you don't want this, the, the team cherry problem, you know, which we've discussed ad nauseum at this point, right?

Like, there's such a, there's such a thing where you're like, yeah, I want my game to be able to last me as many months as it can, especially if I'm like, look, I can only afford to buy one game, you know, for a while.

I just want to get the most game out of it.

And that's very understandable.

But it's like, now we're hitting the other end of the threshold where you're like, this just doesn't make any kind of sustainable sense.

That being said, excellent job.

Very good job.

Good, good job.

The only problem I have with the DLC now is that I don't think the DLC is particularly well balanced for sprinting to the DLC.

In fact, I think it's incredibly poorly balanced for sprinting to the DLC.

How fast can you kill Mogwin?

Yeah, but don't forget the Estes fragments, man.

And, you know, like, and

the fucking Titanite upgrades, like, to be able to buy that shit.

I just did that stuff, and it still took me, like, 15, 20 hours to just get the materials.

Like, I would actually prefer the way that I don't know, you never played Witcher 3, but when those DLCs came out, just in case, they'd be like, Do you just want to play the DLC?

And you go, yeah.

And then you would hit yes, and then they would give you a

appropriately leveled Geralt with appropriate gear that you could just roll into and just do the DLC.

And

I kind of want that for Erdtree because I would rather play Erdtree again now than Elden Ring.

Yeah.

It's

if you have to draw a line and say, no, it's always a separate section and it can't meet up with the other.

Yeah, I think, I mean, the benefit's probably worth it, but starting you not with your own save file

doesn't feel good.

You know,

the ability to load in your own progress and pick up right where you were with your character is huge.

Taking that away is not great.

I don't know if that would be worth it for most people, but at the very least, I don't think, I think everyone is super down with the title screen, select your, yeah, select your DLC campaign thing, you know.

Um,

so there you go.

That's that is the second end of Elder.

I will say, though, for your own edification and maybe for like a one-minute thing next week, go back and find what that shit looked like.

Or, you know, I can can just send you a clip on the break.

Yeah, because it's it's it's absurd how impossible to see it is.

Yeah, I did my little Laura recap at the end of the episode, too.

Like, I did a proper, like, you know, um, dress down of like everything we learned and of the effect of things.

And some people were saying, like, oh, go back and check out the Vati videos on them just for full clarification.

And so, yeah, that might be a decent time to also check out that stuff, too, you know.

Um,

indeed.

Uh, okay, so there was that

other things going on.

Um

yeah

went up to a little cabin

um

had a decent weekend

um grabbed uh Reggie and Min and and uh Millie and Boo and and the crew uh as well as well the gang and the gang um

uh Punch Mom and Momo and uh yeah, we all just went and chilled, had some board games, had some good fun.

There was a

decent opportunity to get some kite flying in.

I saw that was nice, that was rejuvenating.

I appreciated it.

It was very brief because there wasn't enough wind to get a good session going, but just enough to, you know, got a good about half an hour or so in there.

So that was nice.

Got that Bucky's kite up in the air represented.

So we stay bucked.

That's how we do.

Got to,

yeah, brought the telescope as well, but like, it was

unfortunately, we had some nice, we had some good stars, but like weren't able to like get the calibration going.

So, maybe next time.

Um,

we

uh

what else?

There was like, yeah, and then just like in terms of board games, had a good bunch of board games that I've been meaning to get to try out and get around.

Got some really fun ones in there.

So, something I bought a while ago was the Red Dragon Inn,

and I had been recommended that as a board game that is basically you're an RPG party,

but you're coming back from the adventure after it's done, and you're having

you're having a beer at the local inn at the tavern.

All right, and your goal is to talk shit about how fucking cool you are and have drinks and not be and be the last one standing.

Either don't pass out from too much drinking or don't get kicked out because you can't pay your tab.

So

that's it, right?

And it's pretty, yeah, so that's the basic premise.

You are all,

you pick your character and your character has a deck and all these cards associated with them.

And what you basically do is every turn, you have your luck, you have a,

you know, a bunch of numbers from like, say, one to 20.

And then your life starts at 20 and your alcohol starts at zero.

And as you take damage, your number goes down.

But as you drink alcohol, that the other number goes up.

And if they meet in the middle, then you pass the fuck out.

You know?

So

you get into bar fights.

You hurt yourself.

You drink something poisonous.

You take damage.

You get lit up with a fucking

shot.

And then you have to take a chaser.

And then another chaser.

And then you drink

some orc ale that's like only it's good for orcs, but bad for humans.

Content goes up and then you pass the fuck out.

You're out of the game.

If you spend, you gamble with each other, and then you have to raise the ante, and then you can play these cards to take control of the round of gambling and stuff.

And when you run out of money, you get kicked out, you know, and so on.

What's really awesome is the game is basically set up so that you can play

Yu-Gi-Oh!

level by ah, you played your gambling card.

So it is a card game.

It's a card game.

It's cards.

It's cards.

Yeah, exactly.

Right?

You have seven in your hand and you play counters to each other.

So someone's like, ah, I force you to take a drink and tip the bar.

you know, so spend some money and take this drink.

And then someone says, I don't think so.

I counter that and say, I don't have to do it.

And someone goes, yeah, well, I counter that counter and make it so that not only do you have to do it, but now you take some extra damage as well because,

you know, whatever.

We're starting around the gambling and you fucking, whatever, you did something, right?

And then someone else has their like, okay, I have a card that specifically counters that one specific card that says, actually, I'm leaving to go on an adventure.

I'm busy.

I got to go to the bathroom.

Fuck off.

And I ignore the whole thing.

And like, it's just this, you know, this crazy game of like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, JoJo-like escalation back and forth until you, yeah, you've activated my trap card, like, times 50.

Now you're drunk.

Um, it's great.

It's really, really fun.

And

the, the refreshing thing about it, too, is like, every time you play, you can just try a different character.

And everyone's got, like, different builds and stuff.

So, so there's a mage that has like, you know, things where they're like, okay, I can antagonize everybody, get a fight started, and then just be like, and I'm ghosting out.

You can't, I'm not a part of this fight.

Bye.

Or obviously, like, captain of the, of the pirate ship can, you know, tax everybody and command things by authority.

Uh, you got a muscle mommy in there that basically just tanks, drinks, and hurts people and doesn't do much else, you know.

And

yeah, lots of, lots of, lots of fun.

So it's got like maybe like eight expansions now as well.

Each time they expand the game, they add like four new characters too.

So they're all compatible with each other.

Just a really fun, simple game.

Highly recommended.

Red Dragon In, a lot of fun.

And if

you want to play

hard mode, you can take real drinks while having that.

That seems like the most obvious thing in the world.

Yeah.

Doesn't say so, but every time you have to take a real drink, you can have, take a in-game drink, you can take a real one too for a little bit of extra fun.

There was another great game called Cockroach Poker, which I really thought was fun.

Very, very simple.

You get a deck of cards with

eight cockroaches, eight rats, eight spiders, scorpions, whatever.

A bunch of different.

Bat fly, cockroach, toad, rats, scorpion, spider, stink bug.

A bunch of little critter crawlers, little creepy crawlies.

And you hold a bunch of those cards in your hand, and you're all, yeah, everyone's sitting there.

The goal of the game is real simple.

Someone takes a card, passes it to someone else face down, and says, this is a rat.

That person has a choice to either say, yes, I believe you, it is a rat, and I'll expose it, and then you have to take it back, or

no, you're lying, I'll expose it, and now you have to take it back.

And

if you're wrong, you get to keep it.

You have to keep it, exactly.

And in both cases, it goes down in front front of the player.

Or a third option is I say nothing, I look at it, and then I pass it to the next player.

And I say something else or the same thing.

I go, yes, in fact, that was a spider.

Or no, that was not a rat.

Or whatever.

And then I can lie or tell the truth and pass the buck along to someone else.

And if they do the same thing and call me out, then I take the risk on me or vice versa.

And then whoever gets four of the same exposed creature in front of them loses, and it's first person to lose game is over.

There's no winner, there's just one loser.

Interest, yeah,

really, yeah.

So, straight up, it's just you know, um,

do not, uh, uh, do not lose.

It doesn't matter about it's not about winning, it's about ganging up on the person who's about to lose.

It's great,

um,

real fun,

and uh,

yeah, like the best kinds of games are the ones like that where you can

just grab onto it immediately.

Like one round face up,

like slowly, and you're just good to fucking, everyone's good to go and just quick to learn, you know?

So

Cockroach Poker was the name of that one.

And then there was another one, too, that was also fairly simple and good.

It's called Love Letter.

And this was like a Love Letter?

Yeah, and it was like a Star Wars edition of Love Letter.

Kind of similar in concept in that

there's basically like 10 cards, 10 are like Jabba's Palace, 10 are like Star Wars heroes, rebellion characters.

They all do something like guess the number, guess

you're holding two cards at a time, and you have to either

you have to do one of the actions on the card that'll be like, guess the number of one of the players, and if you get them, if you get it correct, they're out.

Or, you know, force them to die if their number is above this or below this.

Or, you know, little conditions like that.

And then you just kind of like play that, and you try to be the last one standing at the end of the round.

And whoever has the highest card at the end, if you're not the last one standing, wins.

And that's pretty much it.

So just a really simple, basic card game.

But

also very fast and fun.

So yeah, just some cool

board games there.

All in all, again.

You got anything else to talk about?

Yeah, well, I mean,

look,

if.

Say it.

Twilight.

Ah,

you dropped the ball, Woolly.

You are supposed to say vampire.

Come on.

What?

Okay, well.

Do you know what I am?

Say it.

Oh, oh, oh, well,

this might lead into the disappointment then, because

that bit seems to have led to an expectation that I'm going to go into a big Twilight discussion at this point.

Well, I'm sorry for everyone's expectations, but no, that was on in the background as it was heartily being mostly ignored.

Reggie got fully in.

He was going.

That's not good.

Yeah,

he was locked in.

But no,

that was background noise while

I was doing anything.

But I did catch that there was a,

I did not know, there was a fucking Muse

music scene involved where they start playing Supermassive Black Hole as they're playing baseball.

Oh, I forgot.

And

they have to play baseball during a thunderstorm so that nobody else can tell that how hard they hit the ball sounds like they're so strong.

They're so strong.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

So that was a thing.

Man,

wild shit.

And I feel like I heard some evanescence play in there as well.

So probably.

It was, it was, yeah, it's like, it's, there's not everyone, not often is a movie scored like a Zack Snyder movie where it's like, I'm thinking in movie trailers and I'm thinking in music videos and I want the actual film to just be that vibe.

Mick G, you know, is another one.

Paramour, right?

Yeah.

So anyways, yes, that was thoroughly.

That was a background noise

while other things were happening, while I was

playing pool in.

Bummer.

It's so good.

It's not.

Mm-hmm.

It's not.

Yeah.

No, I'm sure.

I'm sure there's that

kind of like the does the South Park phenomena happen where you're like, man,

I hated on Twilight when I was younger, but now that I'm older and I watch it again, it's actually unironically super fucking sick.

No, actually, like Twilight.

Twilight completely falls apart unless you are

trying

to use Bella as your self-insert.

Yes.

Right.

If you don't see yourself in Bella, then it just completely fucking falls to pieces.

What what if you didn't want the color grading to just be inverted purple and okay, so this is I was thinking about

I live in the Pacific Northwest now, right?

I don't live I don't live all that far away from where Twilight takes place like Twilight's very close to the Canadian border

And I can tell you

Like, yeah, no, it is it is like fairly blue tinted out here all the time, but not that much.

Come on.

Come on.

The color grading is like CSI.

It's wild.

It feels like

it's halfway between

CSI and those porn channels you couldn't watch as a kid, but they were all inverted and blue.

And then like the colors, it's basically just right there.

Yeah, it's reverse Mexico from Breaking Bad.

It is absolutely, yes, it's exactly.

In traffic, when they're in Mexico and it's all yellow, and then they go to Washington and it's blue.

It's fucking that.

It's crazy.

Absolutely insane.

This is gloomy.

And everyone is super duper.

Original CSI, not Miami.

Everyone is.

You got to be pale.

You got to be pale and almost dying.

That's the look.

That's chic.

Helps the corpses pop.

Always remember that circa the mid-aughts, the most popular baby name for a girl was Isabella.

Yes.

Because

that's, you know.

It's also like insanely,

insanely popular for

girl dogs.

Like you ever see a video.

I see every now.

I follow veterinarians on TikTok and whatnot, do funny little videos.

But the one that's interesting is they go up to like every single member of a staff in a given veterinary clinic and go, what name are you tired of seeing?

Bella.

Like over and over and over and over and over.

I mean,

it's not that big of a secret, but like the most influential pop culture things at a given era are what determine the names, you know.

Rachel had a huge spike because of friends back in the 90s, you know, and there's literally a chart you can follow all the way from the 70s when it gives way, it starts as Catholic names and then it goes into like rich influential names for people that had like, you know, like the most money and stuff.

and then and then we had Khaleesi for that brief shining moment in time but like yeah, but but novels and and movies have a huge impact on on you the wave that takes over all the states, you know

Anyway, so that was all pretty fun

Yeah

shout outs to some some new tech that

Billy, aka Sur Meow Music taught me about.

I didn't realize.

So, you know, people you grill some hot dogs, you grill marshmallows on the fire, etc.

Cheese curds.

You get some fucking putsin cheese curds and you put those over the fire.

Fucking immaculate.

This is the most kibbequa fucking pro tip that has ever existed.

I don't know if you can get the proper squeaky cheese curds.

I think it's funny because, like, you talk about putsin, and

Americans and people in like west of Ontario, Canada, just go, ah, does it have to be cheese curds?

And you just go, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

It has to be cheese curds.

I think if you don't have access to them, which it's outside of Quebec, I'm not too sure.

Hallumi is probably a really great place to go, right?

But like, because, yeah, Halloumi over the fire is incredible, too.

You can make cheesy fries all you want, and that can be fantastic.

But I mean, if you want to fucking make it puts in, it's got to be fucking cheese curds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's delicious.

With the smoky fire flavor, Incredible.

That's good shit.

Okay, and then a little bit else.

I spent some more time poking around at UFO 50.

Ah, good old UFO 50.

In particular, just I was trying to get the deal with Barbuta.

Barbuta.

Barbuta.

And

finally,

after a while, I have I realize what's going on.

A lot.

A lot is going on in that game.

And it's cool, but it's also expressly not what I was in the mood for late at night.

Absolutely.

And I was like, oh fuck.

This is not what I want to play right now.

Like, I so I got lucky because Barbuda was the first game I played because it's number one, right?

Yeah.

And I started to play that at 2 p.m.

in the afternoon.

Yeah.

Barbuda is the first game in U.S.

Day 50.

Yeah.

Daylight.

It's very cool.

It's very slow.

That walk speed is criminal.

It's offensive on purpose.

Yes.

It has to be.

Yes.

However,

there is a bit.

There's a thing to the game.

And upon starting to see what's happening with the game, it changes and it becomes something very different.

But the thing that it becomes

something that is even more time-consuming than just the default game you thought it was.

It becomes fucking Fez.

It's the most time-consuming thing in the world.

And I'm just like, yeah, I gotta be in the mood.

It's wild that that's the first game on the disc.

Crazy.

Fucking crazy.

It's asking so much of you, and it's asking you to basically get a pen and paper out

while you do it.

And

I have have a UFO 50 story for you

that is similar.

The other night,

I was busy all day, so I only got to start streaming at 10 p.m.

And I was planning to do like 10 to midnight or whatever.

And I was on game 10 or 11 or whatever.

And so I landed on Avianos

at 10.30 p.m.

at night.

And

just sat there.

Like that part of the stream is god-awful because it's just me going, oh.

No.

I have plans.

You cannot, you cannot UFO 50 responsibly

by going in cold and just letting the game take it.

In the nighttime hours.

Yep.

Some games are great for that.

Like, like I said, Quibble Race, pop that shit on, immediate bits, immediate, hey, we're having fun.

What's up, Twitch?

Fist bump the screen.

But

fucking Avianos and Barbuta and any game where 90% of the gameplay is silent and it's just staring at this at these pixels going, what does that mean?

It's brave

that they put out so many of those with no music.

Yeah, because it's old.

That's it.

You know, and and like you're supposed to appreciate the fact that, um,

hey, we got a couple more colors in this game.

Um, what's the one where you uh you pick up like your your flower garden girl oh yeah that one uh the the oh magic wizard shit girl whatever that one that's the first one that i'm like oh this is a big upgrade technologically uh look at all these colors but holy shit don't fuck up once or you're dead you know advanced snake with jumping and and yeah anyway um magic garden Magic Garden, yeah.

Fucking Barbuta.

I will be back.

Barbuta.

I will be back, but I will be back on my own terms.

There was something really funny to me that after the stream was over, I went on to Twitter and I saw, I think it was Haddock, be like, I just tuned into Pat's UFO 50 stream, and he's just staring at the screen, muttering Barbuda under his breath for the last 10 minutes.

It's like, yeah, because that's what that game wanted from me.

Wasn't that also Mortal?

Was it that?

Yeah, no, man.

Just like,

Barbuda.

Barbuta.

Barbuta.

Whatever the game is, it's just saying the name.

Well, because it has to be a fun name to say, right?

It has to be just pleasant on the fucking mouth, like Mortal.

Oh, fuck.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that, that, yeah, that, I feel like, I feel like those games need to be confronted

on their terms, and

I will be back.

Speaking of confronting on their terms, of course,

fucking Sir Meow may or may not be tweeting out cryptid woolly photos.

That's fine.

That's

normal.

That's neither here nor there.

Okay.

That's life.

So beyond

all of that,

yeah, only other things I wanted to touch on here.

So through a convoluted series of events over on Versus Wolves

on the other podcast, I have now watched the first season of Twin Peaks.

And I thought that was very relevant.

You're right.

Twin Peaks is always relevant.

Yes.

I can say now

that with that,

I've come to understand something that I don't think I understood in the past

about when y'all would talk about it.

And I kind of

felt this having watched and enjoyed Gravity Falls,

but also not enjoying Deadly Premonition.

I kind of was like, okay.

Twin Peaks is 90% vibes, 10% answers.

So.

Season one.

What's your plan for the second season?

I'm still deciding.

Because the takeaway, ultimately, is that

the vibes

at their

highest

are warm and fuzzy and very like, it's got that cozy, you know, that cup of coffee.

Yeah.

Right.

It's got that whole thing to it.

And it reminds me of how much I enjoyed watching my favorite old TV show, The Wonder Years, right?

The Wonder Years is just a cozy watch.

It just feels good when it's on.

And I get that that's kind of what you're sort of getting here in the middle of a whodunit that's not really about the who and the done it.

So,

but like, yeah.

I would describe that.

Like, melodrama isn't a strong enough word.

I think I would characterize the emotional context of that first season as hyperdrama.

Like, you're sm the very first shot is like you're smash-cutting cutting to people across the town like crying and the music is so fucking loud it's crazy loud

i everyone is doing a scene in which they're like i'm having the biggest emotion yes yes and everyone is being a late 80s actor a you know like that

it feels of the time it feels like yeah 1990 on point with that um especially when you go to high school and and you see all these 25 year old high school kids you know yeah i'm clearly an actor model playing a teenager just like yeah like like literally like what if we took um um

um god what's her name um

anyway yeah pin up model from the 50s and said you're a high school student god you're you're right off of the the the the the artwork on the side of a missile and uh like Audrey Hepburn or type of thing, you know?

Like,

yeah, like, it's wild.

But

the overall bit with just the

vibes elicited by the wood cabin, the mountains, the fresh air, the logs, and the, you know, the old, the old factory, the old mill.

Everyone's...

Yeah.

Everyone's...

Everyone's cheating on everyone.

Oh, it's every relationship.

It's daytime TV, like level cheating.

Um, all of that is there.

And then when Lynch decides to lynch, which I fully expected there to be more of it, there was a surprising, like, it seems almost as if it was like, what if you let me lynch a little bit?

And then I'm wondering if, like, after that red room shit, if people went, ooh, and he's like, oh, you like that?

Oh, can I, can I code, can I, can I, can I, can I turn it up?

Can I,

can I lean in?

The plan seemed to have always been to just boil

a network television audience in water slowly.

Right?

It's like turn it up, up, up

until they were eventually watching nonsense.

Yeah.

But is it emotionally consistent?

Yes.

Even though the plot may be wild, just complete guard.

Like, what's happening?

I don't fucking know.

And so I think, and I think it's, it's, for me, it kind of lands in this in this place where

I do like when those vibes are like, again, when they're landing it at their best.

But there's also times where I'm like, right.

And this is the part where, like, as much as like there's those Lynch moments that I love, there's also the Lynch stuff that I hate, right?

And

Wild at Heart is emblematic of all the Lynch stuff that I fucking hate.

Which one is that?

Is that with James?

That's the one with Nick Cage

rolling through being as being Nick Cage,

just being...

It's weird because he could be a good actor sometimes depending on what the role is, but in this case, it's anyway.

Fucking oof.

So I

if you have an interest in the mechanics of television.

So season two of Twin Peaks is three times as long.

Yeah, it's like 22 episodes I saw.

Oh, that's not an easy watch.

And it is

fascinating from a perspective of the mechanics of putting out a TV show.

Because

an indeterminate amount of episodes into the second season, David Lynch and Mark Frost walked

and the show went on without them,

only for them to come back for the last couple of episodes.

Oh my God.

Okay.

This leads to like one of the strangest series of TV seasons ever because you can

see them leave the steering wheel.

You can see them get out of the car.

Yeah.

This is one of the

term I'm going to use is like, this is, there are times where something is so heavily weighted because of the history with like the channel and stuff that I have never felt more eyeballs in the room with me.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

And I, and so I know how heavy the expectation is, especially having from all the years of people asking me to play Deadly Premonition and stuff.

So I know how weighted it is when I'm watching this.

And I have to say that in the end, I was not grabbed and hooked and pulled in.

I was not.

Oh, I never thought you would be.

No, I was not.

It has a really incredibly specific aesthetic

and vibe and tone that is either enrapturing or merely interesting.

Yeah.

I thought that, that, yeah, as a relic of its time, it certainly is interesting.

That cannot be denied.

And

parts of it are quite fun and other parts are just like, okay,

you know, whatever.

But for the most part, I didn't, there was nothing about it that I was like upset or angry at or so.

Oh, don't worry.

If you watch that second season,

there's shit in there that is like abject.

awful television just terrible what i will say is that i felt like i was watching a procedural with the sprinkles of Kate, of

Lynch in there for some bits and pieces.

And, you know, whenever Cooper gets really weird, it's like, okay, we're lynching it up right now.

It's charming.

It's idiosyncratic.

But there was an element of like

just following the procedural, I don't know that this would have stood out to me

any more than any other thing on TV at the time,

except for

those little weirdisms, right?

And like, it doesn't necessarily, if I was just catching it on TV, I wouldn't necessarily have been like, I'm locked in, I'm hooked, I'm coming right back in for it.

Um, I, and, and, and then, and to be fair, I've seen random episodes of X-Files and like TNG where I'm like, what is happening?

Well, those, those were, so, so, here's, here's, so there's a lot about the second season and the third season and the production of Twin Peaks that is totally fascinating and super interesting to talk about

that we can't talk about because I don't know whether or not you're gonna commit to watching the second season or commit to not watching the second season like either or right yeah um

but x-files was built to be monster of the week x x-files was built to have a 20 episode season episodes one and two are aliens episodes three through 18 are vampires, werewolves, golems, trash monsters, etc.

And then episodes 19 and 20 are aliens so that you could run reruns on it, Right.

Okay.

Twin Peaks was not made that way.

Twin Peaks was explicitly made

to be a consistent through-line narrative that was about a mystery.

But the trick is, is that Lynch and Frost had no intention of ever solving that mystery at all.

Right.

And it was just an excuse to get you into the town and go on these labyrinthine nonsense side quests

with these weirdo characters.

Just get some shit on the air.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I kind of think like in terms of when I'm like,

and I understand too that like because of that and because the vibes are so strong, that develops a very cult following, which then leads to a lot of things that are like, you know, influencing or influenced by it.

And you get your, yeah, your, your gravity falls and your deadly premonitions and

everything else that comes from it, you know?

And I think like there are times where I want those things to go hand in hand and

I want the actual premise to also be satisfying.

I felt like I enjoyed the characters and the world and all that in Gravity Falls.

But another example of something that's like a quirky, quaint kind of thing, but also has a pretty enjoyable, you know,

through line is like Fargo, right?

Yeah.

Fargo is super quirky, and the location that they're in is a big part of like the camp and the enjoyment of the, you know, what's going on.

But like, you're also, but it's also a satisfying watch, regardless of the location part of it and such, you know?

And yeah, and here it's just it's very like I said it's it's procedural and then there's those bits so those and and when what's there outside of the chat the the charm of the town didn't stand out so strongly, you know

I do have curiosity just because of the energy that is you know being exhibited by every like there's a reason why the man that why fucking swear he decided to dedicate you know his his life to making this thing

I mean, we've got Alan Wake, we've got Deadly Premonition, we've got Gravity Falls, like everything that takes place in the Pacific Northwest now basically follows from Twin Peaks to some degree, except for Twilight, ironically enough.

Huh.

Yeah.

Okay.

Riverdale, yeah, I'm hearing as well has this kind of element to it, too.

So

there is that curiosity behind ultimately, like the reason why things are, why this is so beloved.

But from what I can gather here, like, I can, yeah, I can I can sense that

that that fish hook,

maybe, maybe, I don't know, you know, but it was wrapped in plastic.

Um,

yeah, there's, there's a, there's a branching set

of

conversations that we can have based off of whether or not you decide to watch the second season or not, or only watch the second season that includes Lynch and Frost's parts.

Interesting.

Okay.

Or

just watch the second season right up until it had a catastrophic ratings bomb.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

There is a moment in that second season that everyone just threw up their hands and stopped giving a shit worldwide.

Like, okay.

There was reportedly, I think it was Nikita Khrushchev was asking Reagan at one of their dinners, yo, so who killed Laura Palmer?

Khrushchev?

What?

Russian fucking

like it was a worldwide phenomenon.

Holy shit.

Okay, wow.

Well, that's wild.

And then something happens, and then the whole world just went.

Don't care anymore.

Well, what will probably happen is I might just like curiosity watch a bit and then see how I feel.

You know?

Yeah.

That seems like a reasonable thing.

I would say that even if it's not the kind of thing that you personally are like, I'm having a great time,

its presence as a TV show that got utterly fucked up and released in the most bizarre way possible is interesting on its own because

Twin Peaks ended in 91 and it ends the second season on a cliffhanger and then got canceled.

Okay, so and

like you live in a world in which there's a third season,

but for most of our lives, people who had watched that second season were like, I cannot believe this.

Right, right, right, right.

I do remember when all this noise was made about the return some time ago.

The last little bit I'll say on it is that

when it comes to

leaning into

the absurdism and the wild elements of it too,

a good example of what I'm way on board for that is Disco fucking Elysium.

Your inland empire, right?

And also a David Lynch movie, you know?

When you dial it up to that degree, but like...

And

there's a bunch of this in the book too, in Sacred and Terrible Air.

When you dial it up to a degree so far far that like you leave the realm we're currently in to just travel into another dimension yeah that's the third season and but that is that is like overtly the third season but like but there's a point and an emotional resonance or some kind of epiphany that you kind of pull out of that right like like in disco when those moments happen like they're like you and the thing is i know that there's a lot of debate behind the meanings of things and why they land these ways because i've read the full discussion on mutolland drive Drive/slash Dream and like walked away going, okay, that's a lot deeper than my initial watching was, and I and I respect what it's going for, despite the fact that it's like completely

incomprehensible without it.

You do, like, if you have the text next to you as you watch the film,

you can have a deeper understanding of that.

I don't think disco requires that of you, but like when you go on that journey and it spits you back out the other side, like the state the character is in and like what they feel adds a lot to the moment happening in reality, you know?

And those are the times I'm really on board for the fucking conceptualization through the roof inland empire moments, you know.

So, if it leans into those, then that's good.

Um,

but yeah, like the, there are essentially there are essentially five seasons of Twin Peaks, and it's it's

season one,

first third of season two,

the middle,

last third of season two, and the third season.

And they're all completely different.

And

the other bit, too, is that like some of the lynch that I know is also like

some of the some of the text and subtext you read requires external understanding of

what's going on as well to some degree.

Like there's moments in Mudhole and DR where suddenly the characters are like

basically like just there's there's a sudden scene where these two where these two characters are like having this like uh um

it it turns into like softcore porn almost for like a minute and it's like what happened and then it switches back out and it's like well that's the part of the movie that's homaging porn because the movie is homaging a bunch of genres and porn is one of them Yeah, so hey, you don't have to worry about that with Twin Peaks because there's no external anything.

It's all

there.

It's all close.

And if you don't get it, watch it again.

Shut up.

Like, it's.

And if you don't understand, the point might have been for you to be confused.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

Yes, you see, the film is called Mulholland Drive, but it also might be Mulholland Dream.

Mulholland DR is the title, and you can read it many ways if you get into the.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't be so close-minded.

Up your story.

Eraser Head is his most spiritual film.

Do you care to elaborate?

No.

There was a different interview I saw where he was talking about, I think, the return.

And people always ask me what this means.

I'm like, it's right there.

It's in the movie.

Watch it.

That's what it means.

You are watching.

the film.

Yeah.

Like, like, he has no tolerance for like like discussion or deconstruction of his work at all.

It's like, I put it in the movie.

What did the duck mean when it walked by the orb and the PlayStation logo?

That!

It meant PlayStation.

Dumbass!

Fantastic.

Okay, and

one other thing is

just

this is a direct little...

little little seed to plant here.

So something else through the convoluted series of events over on Versus Wolves was that I watched Jiu Jutsu Kaisen, and you must have heard of this as the news.

Do you mean sorcerer battle?

Not the one.

Is that what it translates to?

Is that what it translates to?

Yeah, that's why everybody calls it JJK.

The sorcerer battle fucking sucks, isn't it?

Sorcery battle?

Boy.

That is the...

That is it.

It's not new because it just wrapped up in manga form, but here's what's up.

It's an anime.

It's a shouden.

It's got some protagonists.

They do things.

Eventually, you meet more of them.

They have a bit of a tournament.

And then you meet more, and you find out which one's powers you like.

And then

there's fights.

There's seals that are meant to be broken.

And there's all kinds of...

There's family bloodline techniques.

And there's

the trio.

You know what I mean?

And all that.

There's the cool sensei.

All the bits and pieces, you know.

I just want to, I think it would be.

There's a very interesting but otherwise recognizable series of anime things happening in the first season of that.

And there's enough cool bits to go, like, oh, check out that.

That's pretty fun.

And there's some cool fights.

The second season of Jiu-Jitsu Kaisen is one of the craziest, most impressive feats of animation I've ever seen.

Oh, yeah.

It looks nice.

For the things that it attempts and actually succeeds at doing,

it is kind of a, like, just as a, on a technical Marvel, it is kind of a

must-watch.

Yeah.

I think it's, it's just, the things it goes for are so wild, and then it pulls them off, and it's incredibly impressive.

So I just wanted to say, like, consider that, because

specifically how hard the second season goes

is just, yeah, it's great.

I fully went in in holding my expected Shonen trope bag, and that bag was filled up with tropes that I'm like, yep, there they all are.

And then while doing...

Look at Gojo.

He's the cool one.

Yeah.

And while being as predictable

as possible, it still managed to be radish shit.

Well, that's good.

So

that's some kind of interesting shit.

And,

you know, enough people have talked about how they like, it's like, and then after that, don't worry about it, whatever.

Because people are like, we just wrapped up the manga and they feel it goes downhill and stuff, yada, yada.

But at least as far as that thing goes, that it's

pardon me.

You know, it's one of those, it's one of those moments of like,

just, yeah, animation, escalation, whatever you want to call it, Sakuga quality that

deserves to be to be checked out.

Anyway, so that's about that.

I will

be

streaming this week.

We're going to pick back up.

Hey, Woolly, now that you've beaten Shadow of the Earthry, what are you going to do next?

Wow.

You're going to go to Disney World.

There's still some Phoenix Wright to do.

And

we are going to be continuing that.

Missile the Dog was seen.

Missile the Dog was used.

Missile the Dog is a champion.

Dude, Missile the Dog rules, and also Missile got written into Phoenix Wright, and then Shu Takumi got a dog and then named him Missile.

Okay, hold on.

What happened first?

Because Missile is in Phoenix Wright.

Missile is in Ghost Trick.

Okay, and Missile, Phoenix Wright was written in the 90s.

Okay.

Okay.

So Missile the Dog in Phoenix Wright 1 is first.

Then he gets a Pomeranian and he names him after the dog he wrote in Phoenix Wright.

And then Ghost Trick comes out, so he names the Pomeranian in Ghost Trick after his real dog.

Okay, well, then I was lied to because I was told he had a real dog missile, and then he put his dog in both games.

Got it.

Okay.

Well, the real missile is fucking incredible.

It's great.

Wow.

He's way better than an updated autopsy report.

Incredible.

The best.

Fantastic.

What a powerful missile.

Look at him go.

Yeah.

So Phoenix Wright's going to continue.

I'm going to get some one-offs in there.

I think I'm going to do some more.

UFO 50

and a couple other one-offs.

There's some stuff I've thrown down there that I've been meaning to get around to checking out on the one-off list.

I mean, the I Carry Warriors are in Metal Slug Tactics now.

There's this...

interesting game looking called I Am Your Beast.

There's Mechula Simil Tactics Alpha.

So I don't know.

I'll play some stuff one-off this week.

And then some Phoenix Wright.

And then, yeah, we're going to come back around.

I'm doing the research.

I don't want to announce the new LP just yet.

I'm still

in the research phases, but I'm pretty sure.

Can I find out about it?

Can you type it into the Discord and I'll know it and I'll feel real special.

I'm, yeah, you know what?

Fuck it.

Okay.

I'm currently doing the

I'm doing the groundwork on

cyberpunk.

Okay.

I think we're going in that direction.

And I already have the list of.

It's good now.

It's very, very good now.

Yeah, and I already have the list of what is

um, what saves time,

what will shave time, what say what side quests are worth doing and not doing, and uh, looks like um, and big shout outs to Scud Nate as well for helping with that.

So, um, there's a there's a

probable

streamline here that allows me to cut a good 20 hours off.

Oh, yeah, def art, definitely, but I'm there's a very extreme gradient gradient between things that matter and things that don't.

And Phoenix Wright currently being on what's nearly the last case as well is nice because I'm like, oh, these games are faster than I thought, which means I'll be able to sprinkle some other stuff in place and figure that out.

But yeah.

But I'm doing the research.

So

this is a little preemptive

for

the drop.

So you're not going to see it maybe immediately, immediately, but that's what I'm currently thinking about.

But this week, at the very least, yeah, Phoenix Wright, some one-offs.

And then on Saturday, we'll be playing

Blazing Strike, that 2D fighter that has been on Twitter for years.

It finally came out.

And it looks like one of those Neo Geogems you would find randomly on that ROM list.

That you'd be like, where the fuck did this

game come from?

It came from UFO50, it did.

It didn't, but

yeah, Blazing Strike.

We're going to be checking that out on Saturday.

So that's that's the week.

Wooly vs.

on YouTube and on Twitch.

You know what I'm going to play right now?

The bathroom.

Seeing how hard I can piss.

B-R-B.

What are you eating?

What's in your mouth?

A protein bar.

Lit.

Protein isn't.

That's awesome.

It is.

I had some yogurt this morning.

That's good.

That's important, too.

The

Yes, I just remember, I remembered as well that the slop stream, latest Wooly versus Whatever, is also out.

So go check that out.

Wooly vs.

Whatever.

We watched some bullshit.

It was dumb.

It was great.

It was stupid.

I bet.

I bet.

Nothing smart ever shows up on those streams.

It's fucking.

It's

like every now and then, like they send in like a fucking.

I joined Sokin in Lahi by grabbing my own Atomatone, and I played alongside.

Of course, you fucking haven't.

And I actually synced up with him, and

I felt Sokin.

Asshole.

So the episode name is appropriately Slotbringers.

Oh, hey, I want to give you a shout-out.

There's something that you do on your channel that I think is fucking awesome, and you deserve props for it.

I absolutely love the way you title episodes in which nothing happens.

Yes.

I am in love with it showed up on my

subscriptions yesterday that it's like, this episode is two hours of fighting the boss and failing.

Like, I love it.

It's so straightforward.

What it says on the tin.

It's what I would click on if I read it and went, oh, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

It's what I would want.

Yep, every time.

you got it for real what's going on oh bunch uh let's see this week i played two sponsored streams uh these are paid money sponsored streams so keep that in mind as i talk about them i played towerborn yep uh we saw that uh get shown off at a microsoft event a little while ago yeah d james is working on that one uh yeah i can tell

You mentioned it last week.

I'm like, oh, cool.

And then I'm playing it and I'm like, oh, okay.

So

that is a side-scrolling beat-em-up that has a loot progression system.

So you have a bunch of classes, you do beat-em-up levels, and then you get gear that gives you either new moves or better stats.

And I was fucking around with it for a while, and it's very solid.

And I recognize a bunch of the very specific weapon attacks and their arcs.

Okay.

And where they're coming from.

I'm like, huh, that the sword and shield guy's jumping attack looks a lot like one of Kai's slashes.

And I was like, ah.

And then

one of the devs was in chat, was probably their marketing person.

Was like, yes, we have some people who are really big fans of fighting games on the staff.

Yeah.

And I'm like, that's cool.

And then I use the double daggers special ability, at which point your fighter zigzags up the screen until they hit the middle and then does a slash down.

And it has the identical timing as Chip's Super.

How about that?

Look at that.

And I'm like, okay.

All right.

Also, some of the classes have dodge offset.

Okay.

Yeah,

looking at some of the footage, I saw moments of like, almost like Dragon's Crown and like Guardian Heroes style.

Yeah, absolutely.

But like, yeah, it's fighting game shit going on.

So it's an early access, but it's solid.

It's got juice.

It feels good to hit enemies, which is the best I could possibly say.

A beat-em-up needs a free-flowing combo system to really not get boring after a repetitive.

You want to be able to get your juggles and style and shit going on.

Shout out to Sengoku 3.

So I then also played Trepang 2 yesterday.

Trepang.

And I had never heard of it until they sponsored it.

And I played it, and it's Fear.

Do you remember Fear, First Encounter, Assault, Recon?

I think we talked about it.

We just talked about it.

Yeah, as the weird.

Well, it's not ghosts.

It's monsters.

And it is just the loudest guns with the most particles coming off the wall and the enemies and sprinting and jump kicking dudes.

Well, like one of your buttons is like dedicated slow motion.

And if you kill someone, the slow motion extends.

Okay.

And it is just, do you want to do a full game of the Matrix lobby fight?

Is it tactical at at all?

No, man, you're in there.

Okay.

No.

Like, you can shoot out lights and be sneaky, but no,

you hit that slowdown button and you go in there.

It reminds me of Black.

Do you remember Black?

Yeah, yeah, the realistic game where the bullets do damage.

Where they're just like, we want the biggest jibs.

We want the most bullet effects.

We want the loudest guns.

It's solid.

I really like it.

I might go back to to it on stream later because I flew through that shit, but it didn't get really hard.

So maybe not.

Trepang Team by Trepang Studios and Team 17.

So I also played a little bit more of Metaphor.

A little bit.

And I've hit the part of Metaphor where I can no longer talk to you about playing Metaphor.

That part of Metaphor.

Okay.

Boy, Boy, that's good.

That's a good game.

Yeah,

someone said that there is a very, very strong landing stick that occurs.

They stick the landing on something in particular really, really.

There are some

that's better than you get to that part.

Yeah.

And then

you're like, mm,

yeah.

All right.

Cool, cool, cool, cool.

Also,

man, the character, the cast is so strong.

Like, the cast is so good.

It's like their best cast ever.

They're so

personality-wise.

And interesting.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, they're all winners.

They are all slam dunks.

And I appreciate as the game goes further and further,

you keep running into these situations where it's like, it just so happens

that this dungeon has multiple enemy spawners right next to each other that you could just stand in this one spot and auto-kill enemies as they walked into

your fist, and you could just grind as hard as you fucking wanted.

You could just do it if you want.

It's like, it's very nice that

they give you all these, they're like catch-up spots, but then they're also like, do you want to really hit it hard?

Yes, I do.

I do.

Well, the question is, is are you going, the only way to know if you're going too far is if there's a super boss and you hit it and still struggle?

So, I thought I was really grinding my ass off and removing challenge from the game, and then one of the intro, like one of the bosses that's like a story mandatory, like beat my ass for like an hour.

Oh, yeah, okay, okay.

And um,

and I've been informed by Gene and others that the final boss is very real

and like is like it demands that you build your team for it and accordingly.

So I'm going to keep going forward with that.

Yeah, Metaphor is incredible.

Okay.

It's incredible.

I mean, I would argue that I don't think I've played

any

of the Shin Megami Tensei game that has not, that had an easy final boss.

Like, they've all been work.

From Rhydo to fucking four to five to three, four, five.

I can't think of anything that

didn't give me trouble.

Like, they're all, they're all very real.

Um,

so that's Metaphor, that's Towerborn, and then that's

Trepang 2.

It's written Trepang Squared, but it's Trepang 2.

It's very confusing.

Uh, but the other thing

that

I have to talk about this week is this.

Yeah,

that's pretty.

Pat is holding it up.

That is a pretty red and gold D20.

That is, you got yourself a little set.

A little bit.

The silences.

The sound.

Oh, that doesn't go through?

Noise gate's catching it.

Yeah.

Oh!

It'll go through on the audio version.

So, Paige has been playing DD with a group group for about a year now.

And

just so happens that

two of five people dropped out.

They had obligations or something, and they dropped out, which torpedoed that campaign.

Which then her DM and her remaining members are like, we should start a new campaign and open it up to more people.

And I figured, you know what?

I will give that a shot.

But Pat, you hate DD.

So I don't hate DD.

That's the thing.

So

I had a very, very bad DD experience

when I was like 19 or 20, in which I've talked about this before, but I'll just recap it.

Where basically

a group that I knew needed an extra player for their campaign and then rushed me into it and gave me no direction other than just do whatever you think your character would do.

So I left, split the party, and killed an important NPC because I didn't like them, and then couldn't make it the next week.

At which point, I was informed that I had ruined their campaign.

Okay, okay, okay.

Right.

That will sully the experience,

onboarding.

And I was like, oh, I guess I shouldn't play DD with people because I'll just ruin it for them.

However, my wife plays D ⁇ D now and has been like, that's stupid.

You're stupid.

Just play the damn game with us.

You'll have a good time.

So I'm willing to give it another shot.

However, I am, I'll be honest, I am sick with anxiety.

Well, this is over this.

This is a much safer environment.

First of all, right?

As opposed to last time.

And

yeah, a good DM can accommodate for all kinds of uncertainty, wild pulls, left, right, etc.

You know, you got to roll with the punches to do the job.

But if any, that's that's kind of surprising in the sense that, like, so

I also kind of always thought that like the part that you

would have not enjoyed was like the creative aspect per se.

So that's, that's kind of where it is, is that, like,

so first of all, uh, today,

after today's show, is uh, session zero, which is something I did not get 20 years ago.

And session zero is uh, the discussion, it's where everybody makes their character or rather roles for their character, right?

So that every, so everyone can be kept honest, um, and where the DM breaks down what is to be the tone of the campaign, how much combat, how little combat, what do you guys want to include with your backstories and how you can fit that in?

House rules,

you know, what have you.

So that's literally in like three hours.

Okay.

Cool.

And which is why I have a heart out today.

Okay.

And you're also not going in with the what we with what my group went in with just rabid Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman fandom of just basically making Bastlin bajer.

I'm going in with a little bit of that, I'll be honest.

And

one of the things that's been going on with my brain,

so Paige and I are very similar in a lot of respects, but we are violently opposed in many others.

One of which is Paige is so comfortable with the creative aspects of DD.

Right?

But her memory isn't the best, so occasionally she'll forget some obscure ruling.

I, on the other hand, am super comfortable with that rulebook.

I love that rulebook.

The rulebook tells me what I can do

and what I can't do and how to do it and how to interact.

And it's like the rule book to me is a series of buttons to push.

Yes.

Yes, yes.

Absolutely.

You want the visual novel experience, which is essentially one of three or four decisions at any given time.

Yeah.

And Paige wants to yes and enroll

and have conversations, which, yeah, that's the fun part too.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I see people in the chat saying that I'd be a rules lawyer.

No.

Rules lawyers are killjoys.

It's my responsibility to be my own rules lawyer for my sheet,

not

Jim's sheet.

or Rebecca's sheet because that's between them and God.

But you need a quick multiple choice decision to make at any given moment.

So, like, a lot of people, like, I'm gonna, so I'm gonna be doing my best because I'm not, this is a very new experience in terms of like

role play

instead of just because there's there's the distinction between role play as in R-O-L-E

and role play,

which is R-O-L-L.

I'm definitely a lot more comfortable comfortable with the second one.

So I'm kind of building my character backwards in that I don't have a defined personality

because

I haven't rolled my stats.

Yeah, okay, okay.

Like, once I've rolled my stats,

then I can figure out a personality.

That's so interesting.

Yeah, okay, okay.

I mean, listen, right?

You know,

I imagine that, you know, Paige knows what she's doing here and that you can't.

The thing is with this is like you can't make any mistakes, right?

Everything.

That's not true.

People say that, and that's a lie.

Okay.

That is a lie.

Okay.

Well, how about this?

How about this?

We take the Bob Ross school of philosophy here, where mistakes can be turned into better moments, into miracles,

if the people involved, if the DM and everyone knows how to roll with it and

make it great, you know?

So I have been,

to quell my anxiety over, oh, am I going to do a good job?

I've been reading, I found the RPG Horror Stories Reddit,

which is now one of my favorite subreddits of all time.

And it is people describing their bad experiences in DD.

Okay.

And man, there's some miserable fucking shit in there.

I'm just the there are

famous clips of people

dude people losing their minds getting into screaming fits and then shoving everyone out of the way and running out of the room.

No, you know you can't yeah.

And it's like it's like it's

oh it's good.

I love it.

Yeah.

It gets bad.

But the one part of the character backstory that I have decided with,

which I Paige and I came up with simultaneously, I mean, me me and Paige are a married couple, and we're very in love.

So wouldn't it be fun to play characters that are viciously divorced?

Just

very antagonistically divorced.

Dang, let's go.

That's fun.

So today at session zero,

part of the character creation will be to show to the group that we are married and we do like each other so that when we get into it in character, people aren't tugging their collars going, oh, Jesus fucking Christ, am I watching a real fight?

I mean, divorced protagonist energy is some of the strongest there is.

That's fantastic.

That's really good.

Yeah, immediately someone, especially if you have a, like an otherwise capable, somewhat charming character, but there's someone who's right there that's familiar and so sick of their shit.

You know, that's great for any setting.

That's fantastic.

So here's hoping that goes well.

I'm not locked in for the campaign.

I'm on a trial series of sessions.

If after three or four sessions I either hate it or vice versa, I will show up for a session to die and then exit out.

But I'm not too worried about that.

If you roll your dice and it crumples to dust,

you have an act.

That would be bad.

This is a metal dice.

So that would be impressive.

Also, I got this home.

Things have happened in the clown dimension.

I got a point.

I got this home and I rolled it to test.

Like, you have to test your dice.

Even I am familiar with the superstitious nature of your dice.

And the very first role that I ever took with this that Paige was what Paige watched me do it was a nat 20.

And I'm like, okay,

you

are okay.

Bodes well.

Bodes are right.

Yeah, it was a 20, a 14, a 10, a 3, a 4, and a 12.

And I'm like, oh, that's a nice, good bell curve.

Okay.

All right.

And just

hear

the Baldur's Gate narrator in your head every time.

I Amelia Tyler?

Well, no, it would be our DM now.

Well, yes.

Who is the only person in this group I know other than the wife?

Okay.

But, I mean, the DM would be the person to know, right?

Okay.

Yeah.

Well,

that...

story makes sense as to why that experience is is sullied and and it also is also why things that are so DD adjacent in video games are super.

I love that shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The other thing that I always forgot.

So, because I was in the story, I forgot the details of that story were not obvious from my telling.

I forgot to explain that the people I was playing with were theater kids.

They were Dawson theater kids.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Club.

Oh, this was Club Space.

It was adjacent.

Yeah, at the other side.

The other adjacent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

so, like, there's a lot, like, now that I'm

parting out.

I was going to, you know, now that I'm going to be playing DD for at least a little while, I have now put my foot directly into the discourse, which has only gotten more intense since we were kids.

In the 90s, D ⁇ D was a fucking video game on paper.

It was, let's hit that dungeon, let's hit the adventure module, etc.

At some point,

probably because of Critical Role, or at least helped it along, DD has now been positioned as it's a collaborative storytelling adventure with you and your friends.

And sometimes you roll dice.

And the

very

strong opposition from both ends of that spectrum

are fascinating because the group that I played with in

2009,

whatever the fuck it was,

was

a fucking make-believe masturbation session with a bunch of people fucking spouting off about their OCs.

Yeah, no,

there is a little bit of like, okay, if half of this, if your character was already made and waiting on DeviantArt and you're in a room with five Jack Blacks

standing up, can you see?

He's a man.

Let me hear.

You applaud.

He's more than, you know, like, I get that that is not what you're looking for.

My, my D ⁇ D sessions have been with my group of high school friends that were basically just the same group of people we knew, except now we're playing, you know, whatever characters, but it was all, we were all extremely familiar.

Yeah.

And our history teacher, the cool history teacher, was the DM, you know.

So, yeah, it is, you do roll the dice, so to speak, going with random people that you don't know as well.

Well, here's the thing: they're not random people because my wife knows them.

Okay, so they're vetted.

Yeah, they are vetted.

Like, I'm sure a couple of them are a little cringe, but we're playing DD and I'm almost 40.

So

who am I to fucking

point that stick at?

Yeah, yeah.

But no, and I think it also becomes quickly and immediately apparent whenever somebody joins a group that is just like fails the the vibe check right yeah uh uh um fails the

fucking what is what would that the the thavo

the favo

no

to hit armor vibe zero

oh yeah that's really good you should feel good about that that's important that's important

but yeah sounds good Hell yeah.

So we're also going to be playing a campaign that is.

So I'm really throwing my ass into the shit I'm not comfortable with because the

campaign that we're rolling into is an adventure module that is designed to be completable without combat.

Ooh.

Like conversation.

There will probably be some combat, right?

But it is completable without combat, which is the part that I am just the most comfy with by far.

So I'm building a character that is,

I'm focusing up on a lot of non-combat oriented skills and spells and whatnot.

So I'm going to have to do the talky roleplay shit.

And so hopefully this pit in my stomach leaves at some point.

And then your charisma is a nine.

And then you have a fucking uphill battle.

Oh, no,

I'm playing an orc warlock, so my charisma will be high.

Okay.

If nothing else is high.

But I'm planning to go for low end.

Okay.

I want to play a charming dumb person.

Yeah, alright.

I'm like putting it through the fucking the Weiss and Hickman filter.

You want to Tasselhoff a little bit.

No, fuck that little shit.

Fuck that little shit.

He's got some charm to his dumb.

Yeah, so I'm going to be going Orc Warlock, and Paige is going to be a Hex Blood Sorcerer, probably Wild Magic, because Paige likes to roll the dice and have weird shit happen.

And we're going to be viciously divorced.

And we'll see how that works out.

We also spoke

between ourselves, and I'm like,

I'm the type of person in this scenario where if there is a cursed item that looks like it could give give me something, I'm going to touch it.

And I'm cool with the rest of the table

having to violently stop me and hurt, like attack, and almost murder my character

to stop me.

You're going to be fine.

It's going to be great.

You're going to be a-okay.

I want the orb.

No one can.

I want it.

I don't know what it does.

It's probably bad, but I want it.

When it's your turn, it's your turn.

So, yeah, here's hoping that goes well.

Okay.

I'll be reporting back next week with

vibes because there's no playing tonight.

It's character creation and whatnot.

Actual sheet on fire somehow.

Oh, you know what?

There is something else I want to talk about.

So the D ⁇ D Beyond app.

So we're playing 5th edition, right?

No, we're playing 2024, 5th edition.

Of course, there'd be apps now.

I don't know why I'm doing it.

I don't know what other systems have the app or an app,

but

5.5 or

2024, whatever you call it, has an app called D ⁇ D Beyond.

And it's cool as fuck.

It's streamlined, I imagine.

It's real slick.

So the first thing that happens is you load it up and any book that you want to buy digitally, you can just read through the app.

So I have the Player's Handbook 2024 on the app, and I read the entire Player's Handbook on the app.

Control F function on the goddamn, yeah.

So here's library monitor shit that I own.

Here's

here is listings where you can search classes, magic items, equipment, monster species, et cetera, and just control F.

None of this modern, yeah, none of this dawned on me till now, but right, we're in the age of fucking smartphones and yeah, wow.

The other thing

is that,

so everybody in the group but Paige uses the app

and

Paige prefers pen and paper.

Like she is old-fashioned that way.

She wants her notebook.

She wants her notes.

She wants a piece of fucking paper.

But

The DM put the campaign up on the app and I joined the campaign and through the app and now he turned sharing on and the DM owns every book and now I have every book because he turned sharing on.

Oh.

So the way that that works is when you build a campaign, all players that join, you can set to, they can read every book you own.

Okay.

Can you?

And here's where the app really like, I was like, oh, that's really cool because reading it and searching for it.

But there's a character builder on the app

through, like, you hit character and you can make a sheet.

And the character builder has dropdown menus for every choice you could possibly have.

And it fills in by what's been shared with you.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Nice.

So when I go to races, it says Player 2024 core races.

5th edition core races, Xanathar's Guide to Everything races, Tash's Cauldron races, and it's all on a massive list.

And I click it and it shows me my racial.

it asks me what proficiency I want I'm on the I have this open and I'm like I can choose all my cantrips from a fucking dropdown menu once the sheet is made or do does it do you use it like mid-campaign as well

once the sheet is made

the you have a it changes into a character sheet that is like a you know your your smartphone and there's a character sheet and it has the full sheet and then it has your fucking fucking your your your your basic stats and your proficiencies and if you need to roll them you touch strength and it will roll a strength check for you

Fuck and you touch

Arcana and it will roll your arcana roll for you damn okay and you click your spell slots and go I use the spell slot and it will deplete it and you hit a button for long rest and it will regenerate all your shit on your sheet.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now I'm gonna still roll this fucking dice.

Yes.

Yes.

Because I want to roll the dice.

But keeping track of shit like my spell slots and my HP

and that, okay, I'm going to use the fucking app for that.

Yeah.

And you can, of course, roll manually and then update it to whatever the fuck you need to, right?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay.

So this, all this, all this has come along as good as it should have since it's been however many fucking decades.

Yeah, that's

very impressive.

Solid.

Okay.

It's super, super impressive.

But the other thing is that, like, so since all of our sheets are in the app, the DM on his his app can just go through our sheets.

I'll just use them all, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, like, even on the on the campaign screen, it's mathed out all of our characters and says, here's what the passive perception of every character is.

Here's the passive investigation of every character.

Here's the armor classes.

So he has that all on like a fucking list to throw shit at us.

And now you don't have to argue when like someone doesn't remember what happened three sessions ago properly at a specific event, or worse, if the DM themselves misremembers.

Oh, we don't have to worry about that.

Paige is the

stereotype of the note-taker.

Paige has exhaustive notes of every session and everything and every NPC and every item and every event.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's basically what you do to then write a book.

You know,

that's how you get those campaigns converted.

nice okay

um

so yeah no this this app is is fucking super cool like it has made getting into this and creating a character like much easier because instead of me going okay tome of war a pact of the tome warlock i get three cantrips from any school and i don't know i go oh man and then i have to flip through the book to this to this to this It's on a fucking drop-down menu.

Like, no.

Here's the ones that count.

Here's the ones that don't.

The art of like lightly writing your HP number in pencil and lightly erasing, because by the end, that's going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah, instead, I just hit HP and then go change it from 32 to 28.

That shit was huge.

That was massively annoying.

Okay, cool.

But yeah, no, definitely going to roll these dice for sure or Z, because they're heavy and I want to roll dice.

But also,

having the physical dice and rolling it myself gives me the illusion of control

over the dice roll.

Right?

Because a digital dice roll is going to be fair.

No, you didn't do your ritual, therefore, that didn't count.

I didn't blow on the digital dice.

So

that's why I rolled bad.

Also, clicking once and watching a number just suddenly turn into something is like violent and

to the app's credit when you click the number or click the roll a a dice rolls onto your sheet okay yeah and then it gives you the number i've talked about how when you go to vegas and you're like playing casino games one of the worst feelings in the world is when you're playing war and war is just you draw a card the dealer draws a card and the higher one wins you can play that in a casino yeah and that's crazy and if you draw like the same number then you just you have to do like one two, three, four, five or something like that.

Whatever.

It's a very basic.

It's literally just bup up.

And you put 10 bucks down, you put 20 bucks down, bup up, 20 bucks gone.

Bop up, 20 bucks gone.

And it's so violent because

it's one input.

There's no obfuscation.

There's no game.

There's no like blackjack, pass, hit, split, check the number.

Oh, sock 17.

No game.

There's just two numbers and you feel so robbed.

Nobody plays it.

It sucks, you know, and it's the same bullshit.

Like, you're going to lose your money over there anyway.

But this way, it's just one and done.

And you're like, ah, I hate this.

So, yeah, you have to have the little ritual.

You got to have the little extra step.

Otherwise, you can't fucking enjoy anything.

The other thing is that...

I mean, you said you played D ⁇ D back with your friends in high school or later, but I was not familiar with this.

So, in picking out a set of dice to use, so audio listeners at home can't see this, but Paige got a new metal dice, which is just black metal with pure white because her eyes are terrible.

And DD is usually played in low light, so this is easy to see.

But I'm looking at dice, and I'm going to my local shop, and

buying this and fucking with it feels exactly the same as buying an arcade stick.

I don't need

it is the same,

oh, but it's nice though.

Ooh.

Yeah, I bought, like, I walked with a pair of dice in my bag for the longest while, long after I'd ever stopped, like, long after I stopped playing the game.

I always kind of just wanted one.

I'm like, you never know when you might need it or something.

And then I was just like, no, they're just fun little trinkets to have and play with.

I just like the trinket on my purse.

That's it.

And you just kind of want to have it around sometimes, and the noise it makes is satisfying, and there's a weight to it, too.

And you go and you see a fancy one at like a fucking dealer or something.

And like, yeah, it's just a a little

toy.

So I dove a little deep on this.

Man, there's some fancy dice.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, no.

There's conventions where they have like super fucking primo elite.

You want some high-end resin liquid core dice.

And they're somehow still balanced accurately.

to not be rigged one way or another.

It's crazy.

And again, it can get pretty expensive, too.

You can get way up there.

Yeah, I've seen some really fucking fancy, you know, you cut Moonrock into dice if you're willing to pay.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, well, I was looking on Etsy, right?

And it's like, do you want

cat's eye D20s?

And then they're like, you can't roll this on a regular table because they'll chip and explode, but they're nice.

A fucking a D12 made of dinosaur bone.

A zebra bone or dinosaur bone.

Yeah, absolutely.

And they all have the thing of like, well, it's bone, so like, um, roll it on a cloth because it'll break.

Also, like a D4 holding the top of the little pyramid and just like doing oh, yeah.

So I it's like a fun little thing.

It's different from the roll and let go.

It's a little like, woo.

So which D4 are you talking about?

You talking about the triangle?

The triangle.

Yeah.

I don't know what the new one looks like.

I know about the one.

The new one looks like a weird, like, Mobius strip oval.

It's very strange looking.

Okay.

Huh.

But yeah, so I went and got

sharp dice instead of rounded dice.

Oh, the corners are.

Because they're fairer.

Okay.

Because

you're rounded dice without super sharp edges.

Well, they can roll an extra time.

You see, like casino dice.

Casino dice are sharp dice.

So it's fairer.

But metal dice, I just like it.

It's gold and red.

I like it.

It's pretty.

Nice.

Okay.

So that's what's going on with me.

This week, Paige and I are also going to be

streaming the casting of Frank Stone, the adventure game from the Dead by Daylight people and the Until Dawn people.

Apparently, that thing sucks, so we're really excited.

So that's going to be on uh on halloween and the day before halloween so 30th the 31st

uh and friday i'll be playing the monster hunter beta which apparently is great

you see the uh arachnophobia mode i saw the arachnophobia mode it turns them into little slugs so here's what's weird woolly

There are going to be large spider monsters in that game.

And the arachnophobia mode may not count them no

no the the fear is the small ones the big ones you just gotta fucking deal with it i don't know as that's that's crazy because as somebody that's really nuts as someone who properly dislikes giant fucking i don't have arachnophobia but i don't like the being

yeah i've talked about it before you know the getting stuck underneath the legs you know like yeah no i don't like that no that's normal no one liked that i i you know uh i want to say there was a game that just took the legs away and made them kind of float you know as one thing oh you're thinking of uh grounded okay there was like a bunch of different settings like it like did basically take legs away or fuzz them up and like the final level was it just turned them into like like a like a fuzzy orb with googly eyes on them um i mean again the uh

the whatchamacallit uh um not as a bad company um

whatever the the co-op game there you it turns it into the word spider.

Okay.

It's just a 3D word spider that's just like walking around.

I think the goop for Monster Hunter is a pretty good solution.

I think that's pretty funny.

Well,

it looks like it belongs.

Not only that, but

it doesn't ruin the design, but it's also cute.

I think it's a cute slime.

And it like slimes on top of you when you're on the ground and stuff.

I'm like, that's great.

Yeah, Satisfactory, you know that factory game?

It turns them into JPEGs of one of the devs' cats.

Cats, right?

The cat face pegs.

Yeah.

No, Lethal Company, that was the game.

I think I would, even with, even though the smaller spiders might not be an issue, I would turn it on because I like slime goop things.

Fucking yeah, those are cute.

I'll probably turn it on and off.

And fighting a big, dynamic slime monster

roaring and spitting webs out.

Hell yeah.

Cool.

Okay.

Yeah, that's pretty much it for me.

Metaphor will be back on Saturday.

And you can go down to twitch.tv/slash Patstairset for all of that shit.

All right, let's take a quick word from our sponsors.

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Alright,

so

in the news.

Concorde is over!

Concorde has yet to begin.

So yes.

I guess it never did.

Here, I understand.

Sony is shutting down Firewalk Studios, the maker of Concorde.

However, the secret level episode of Concorde will only air after not only the game, but the developer are gone.

So

is that not the most insane fucking time?

Like, has this ever happened?

Has anything like this ever happened?

Where?

No, the marketing comes out after the thing's after the thing's death.

No.

Wow.

It's like sending out invites to your baby shower after the stillbirth.

I mean,

yeah,

that's one way to put it.

We still have the registry up, so,

you know.

For sale, baby shoes never used?

Yeah.

I guess.

holy fuck man it's crazy and like

what if here's the thing

what if that episode is really good

then that's extra funny what if it's a really good episode where you're like holy shit

i kind of like that um

i mean yeah this is just Not surprising, I guess, because there were signs because the lead, you know, left and then a couple of people were let go leading up to this.

And then, so, yeah, right before we started,

Jason Schreier is broke that they're just going to shut down Firewalk Studios in general.

Of

more note than that.

So, first of all, all those people are out of jobs.

That sucks.

Of course, we reset the

however.

So, Kotaku is reporting about the numbers that went into Concorde.

And the first number is that the initial budget for Concorde was 200 million.

Remember we did the 400, we talked about the 400 million steps.

And everyone was like, that can't possibly be real.

Yep.

Well, 200 million was the initial budget.

And then they ran out of money.

So that 200 million does not cover the whole dev

or

Sony buying Concorde's IP or the studio.

So now now that number increases to the cost of the entire studio transaction.

So this thing put like

a third to half a billion dollars into the air.

Bad character design and

just horrible timing.

There's a lot of factors that you could go that like someone's building up their thesis statement on why Concorde failed and doing their like PhD on it.

But yeah, I think you can actually point to like the bad character designs as like 50% of what killed that game.

There are going to be a plethora of invisible reasons, but the ones that we see that stand out certainly start there.

Is just the first thing is the looking.

Just like you look at it and you go, I don't like that.

Yeah.

And then somewhere in second place would probably be the toxic positivity bit.

You know, the mistakes can't be pointed out.

The timing couldn't have been worse.

I mean,

for gas.

Direct comparison, direct competitors just absolutely crushing it while being delayed and doubled down on in

cost and bloat.

I will say, though, I hope everyone working on that Horizon live service game is super excited for people to not trust that game to even exist.

because Sony just showed their willingness to let you buy a game and then kill it.

I'm like, yeah, you'll get a refund, but like.

I mean,

the thought is, the thought is like, this is going to, like, the way to save the most money in the long run is to kill it now.

It's to kill it.

Then to let it linger.

Yeah.

At least Rumbleverse was fun and good and is in your head as like, damn, that thing went, but like, we really enjoyed it while it was here.

you know we're starting we're starting to enter into like

i didn't think this is gonna be one of the things that leads to like a minor video game crash is like the games take too long to to fail

they take too long to fail

right concord took like what six seven eight years

to trip

I dude, they should have canceled that

six years ago.

Just because of the way history has gone, it's not like there have been numerous video game crashes, so it feels like that's the way you line it up for the next one.

But like the world- things have changed so much that I think it's more accurate to probably expect or call it a AAA video game crash, right?

Yeah.

It's a triple-A.

Bluy Ubisoft is going to go away.

Video games are going to be fine.

There are many things that are considered video games these days.

Triple-A is absolutely in trouble.

more than it's ever been.

You can't make these types of...

The bet gets bigger and the time gets longer and the world moves by the thing that you're making.

Like that happened with Suicide Squad 2.

Suicide Squad came out

years late for itself.

And the thing that cost infinitely less that was made infinitely quicker

becomes a huge hit and blows everything else out of the fucking water and is just what everyone spends their time playing

yeah so um

wow let's not forget let's not forget by the way

that everyone that i've been able to track down that played concorde was like it was not very good like like at the very end of the road okay it wasn't good enough to to work on word of mouth or whatever it was just kind of bad bad.

I mean, just all I had to go on was just looking at the footage of like, you know, some powers being cast, and it was like, yeah, hero shooting stuff.

The reload animations are really nice.

Bouncing off the wall, super jumping, all that stuff seems fine, you know.

But,

yeah.

So, so, you know, there's that.

Um,

it can join

Mahurshala Ali's Blade reboot.

Uh, as of today, we've learned that Blade has been delayed indefinitely.

It has been removed from the Marvel release date calendar.

And somehow,

Wesley Snipes

has never been more right than with his line:

there will only be one blade.

There can only be one blade.

I need someone, everyone within the reach of my voice,

find

a reason for what the fuck is going on.

What the fuck is going on?

It's always possible that it's like Murhershallah Ali could be busy, but that doesn't explain four

delays.

It explains maybe one.

Perhaps.

There's only one thing I can think of that pops into my mind is that they won't let the movie be R-rated.

And then that just like, puts like a couple, like they write it and they're like, this is shit.

And it's like, yeah, because you can't, because I can't violently murder people in my Blade movie.

It's kind of important.

I mean, the timeline is that in 2011, they regained the rights.

Marvel regained the lights, the rights from Lionsgate and New Line.

They confirmed Blade is back at Marvel in 2013.

They tease it, bringing it to the MCU in 2017.

They announce it in 2019.

2020,

they announce that it's actually a TV series.

2020, they're looking for other writers.

They hire different writers over 2021.

It gets pushed back in 2021.

They hire a new director to take over.

Yeah,

none of this really gets at like

any specific bits, but they just there's things like, oh, the Eternals gets cuts a Blade cameo in it because that ends up stinking.

Oh, he was there?

I didn't know that.

One of the

Eternals producer Nate Moore revealed one version of the post-credits scene was going to show Ali as Blade.

And then,

yeah, they cut it.

His voice ended up being there.

Oh, man.

So, a guy in the chat, Rota Brutsum, just said, so Blade got the Overwatch 2 treatment.

Like, yeah, absolutely.

Every time Blade comes up, well,

he just gets the story removed.

Oh, I was like, because they're having, I mean,

the Overwatch 2 treatment would be taking Wesley Snipes and just, like, editing it slightly and re-releasing it and calling it like New Blade.

Yeah, I guess you're right.

Anyway, yeah, so there you go.

That is

that is that is indefinitely

delayed.

I think

I think what we need to do, maybe it'll come back if we pray hard enough.

to the anime mascot that the Vatican has revealed.

Luce

is the official mascot of the holy year 2025.

And if you have not seen it, I will send you over here

a photo.

The Catholic Church has officially unveiled an anime

mascot character.

It's got a little crucifix.

It's got a little stick.

You know, some boots.

And, um,

yeah.

I don't know,

that little kind of like walking stick thing probably could be used to, uh,

you know,

inquire

as to how faithful one might be.

I gotta say, I'm gonna be really blunt.

The photo of the article that you have sent me with this creepy old priest reaching out to this tiny anime girl, it looks like shit.

It looks like shit.

It couldn't be more unfortunate.

I swear to God.

I look forward to.

Oh, that's the Pope?

Oh, Jesus.

It's Archbishop Fischella says the mascot was inspired by the desire to live even within pop culture, so beloved by our youth.

Bro, you guys, guys.

What they need to do is put out a fucking Catholic anime.

Like, just a straight up.

I mean, we're closer than we've ever been.

Yeah, I think it's called Berserk.

I think it's called the

Falcon of the New Millennium Empire chapter.

I think Mazgus and his tower are what you're talking about there.

Yeah, this is cringe, guys.

Just hardcut.

This is cringe.

Hard cut to all Protestants just doing the thing with the guy taking the headset off.

Just hardcore.

Oh, yeah.

Can we get all organized religions to get their anime characters out and just see which one's the coolest?

Well,

now that's the only way to save it, right?

The church.

I think the Mormons would have the best one.

I'm going to be honest.

Man, John Smith's own Miku.

Fuck with the golden tablets ready to go.

Yeah.

Okay, but hold on, though.

What about

Scientology anime protagonist, though?

Clear.

That would just be Stan Marsh, wouldn't it?

Clear with no thetans

ready to take.

Not even one thetan?

Not even one.

Clear.

OT Kun.

Dude, who the fuck is this shit supposed to work on?

Like.

I mean, you know, they've been going through the new era.

It's the cool pope.

People have been hanging out and

they've been getting in there with the youth more than ever.

They've been bands and they're,

yeah, they're doing the youth outreach.

It's reaching out to everybody listening to this right now.

I don't know, man.

Luchekun.

You got to make people afraid that they're going to go to hell or something.

You got to get them scared.

I mean, I think it's a missed opportunity to, if they're embracing anime, they easily could have just embraced Sonic because the overlap is already there.

And if they made Sonic the official mascot

of the whole league of 2025,

this would have been on fucking fire.

Oh, you're super right.

It's just a missed opportunity as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, my God.

Oh, man.

Marketing.

Well, no, wait.

That doesn't make any sense.

Because, like,

those Sonic kids are already in.

Yeah, but now it's official recognition.

And Sega licenses it.

Sega licenses out Sonic.

I don't think that's going to happen.

I don't think that's going to happen.

Confirmed.

You know?

The kids are already there, and they're allowed.

So.

Yeah.

Good times.

Also, let's be blunt.

This character is like

they got no sauce.

They got nothing going on.

This character wouldn't even rate in Italia.

Speaking of having no sauce.

Devil May Cry, Peak of Combat, is shutting down.

Isn't it only shutting down in one region?

Is it staying open in North America?

Hmm.

Well, here's what I, what I, what I, what I've learned is that

every time something collaborates with Punishing Grey Raven,

it dies.

The main thing, it dies.

So,

Nier Automata

hooked up with Punishing Grey Raven.

At which point, they immediately announced the closure of Nier Reincarnation.

And then

there was the Blazing Sumilicrum

event, after which point, Black Rock Shooter Fragment announced the end of its service and Devil May Cry 5 is now collapsing.

Oh, it's shutting down in China, which is like, oh, that's only one country.

It's the biggest market.

It's the market it comes from, is it not?

It's the original market.

So I think what's happening, actually, Wooly, is that people have decided that they're going to kill the game, and then they go to Punishing Grey Raven.

I think the cause and effect on that are reversed.

Ah.

Let's go to the popular thing because we don't have to push our own marketing over here anymore.

And then we'll announce the thing, and then when everyone's excited about the thing, then we'll close our thing.

I can't see a world where

the source region goes down and then the second one doesn't follow shortly after.

How excited can you be about a game like that that doesn't even ship in the country that you live in?

Right?

That's weird.

Uh, yeah.

So,

I don't know.

Um,

there's some cool artwork that is associated with that game

that is kind of trapped there.

But hey, there have been copious amounts of fan editing to remove the word peak of combat from the wallpapers

so that you can just enjoy it for the devil may cry art that it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's nice.

Anyway,

speaking of, sorry, Dante.

Speaking of

being freed from jail,

you know where this is going.

Do I?

Xenoblade Chronicles X

edition has been announced for the Switch.

So this marks the end, by the way.

The final game.

This is the final game of note on the Wii U

that is moving on.

And I think we can assume that the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible.

So, like, we can just all fucking pretend the Wii U didn't even happen.

We are all free now.

That's it.

That's it.

I'm super interested in playing that game because

that's one of the only games that I played on the Wii U that mandated the Wii U gamepad.

Oh, really?

It was like, you must play it with the gamepad.

Okay.

Okay.

And I said, no, I'm not going.

And it said, too bad.

What did it do?

Like, half of your menu and inventory stuff was just on the gamepad.

Oh, it wasn't like gyro stuff.

It was just a control.

No, no, it was like, you know, you have to control your party.

The only place you can see your map, shit like that was all on the gamepad.

I was like, I don't want to.

Fuck off.

That's an easy fix.

Yep.

Yeah, okay.

Well,

you know, it's nice that it took a while, but eventually happened.

Nintendo easily could have just been like, fuck all of you forever, because they have no fucks given about things being no, they love Monolith Soft now.

Monolith Soft's their little baby friend, but they also love disallowing people from ever playing games ever again.

That's true, that they do hate that.

They get huge boners, they get porked up every time you're never allowed to play a game again.

Anyway,

it's free.

Yeah, and then

last little bits here, but there was some cool shit that got announced.

Uh in particular,

we heard a little bit about Claire Obscure,

Expedition 33.

It's short and it's cheap.

Or Expedition

Trentois.

Um they've announced the French casting with a big old French trailer and with that French trailer you see the French ass costumes and people are l they literally have b uh

berets striped shirts and baguettes that's great that's great look incredible and you know what this game looks fucking cool man i'm getting really strong lost odyssey vibes oh yeah that's exact oh you're super right from the trailer right i'm getting the like realistic high action high octane rpging

you know um the cast is doing they're doing wild shit but it's all got numbers popping out.

Uh, fucking looks looks great.

And the dub cast in French in particular has a like it's an all-star French cast.

I think I might play this game in French,

like, see, it feels like it might be the way

I might

have agreed with you

if not for

French,

but also

Parisians, but also

like I don't want to role, I don't want to play a role-playing game in which in the back of my mind, I'm like imagining like where they're all pissing in the street off camera whenever the camera's not looking at them.

But also

I'm crazy about the English dubcast.

I like, you know, Ben Starr and

Jennifer English.

Yeah, no, to be fair,

they've got winners.

It's just, it does, it's one of those bits.

It's like playing the Japanese game in Japanese a bit here.

And I feel as if a bunch of dumb Victor Chevalier bits

are prime to go.

Especially if, like, Reggie's sitting there throwing the accent on as strong as possible.

You just fucking getting.

Going full Leon the Professional with it.

You know, going full Amelie Poulet.

This game looks fucking cool.

Check out the game.

It looks really dope.

Check out the latest trailer for Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

It is the Frenchest thing I've ever seen, and it looks like

also

the

new studio there,

Sandfall Interactive,

pretty impressive for a

like first game effort.

We don't have a ton of detail.

I know it's got like the former Ubi

people,

and it's got some funding from, I forgot who the other producers were,

but

yeah, shit looks tip-top.

And I'm ready for this a nice clean Lost Odyssey-like absolutely, you know,

closed RPG.

And another game

that just dropped a trailer.

And this was fun because

I always like when I'm following these Twitter games that pop up as little gifts and I'm like, when is it going to be real?

And the answer can often be never.

But a trailer for Sushi Ben has popped up.

And Sushi Ben is a game I've seen on Twitter a bunch.

By, yeah, Demodev.

It is.

got the vibes of Mega Man Legends in its art style.

Everything pops up with manga panels and it's got just a really clean, fun kind of design.

Lots of flavor, flair, lots of.

Ooh, there's an Acura slide.

Yep.

And

so, and I recognize this because there was a thread that devs were talking about

the walking, like how hard it is to animate a character walking upstairs.

And then the girl in this trailer is showing.

Oh, that's what that was.

Yeah, she's stepping on her servant men as they're kneeling at the stairs.

So she never has to actually go up.

She just kind of keeps walking forward as they it's like a hack to get around the difficulty of stair animation.

But and as a result, she's just like they're literally there

for she's stepping on them the whole time, and then there's a helicopter made out of them.

Very like, it's again, I want to say the Mega Man Legends kind of like awesome cell shading art style.

A bit of that kill-la-kill kind of humor going on with it.

Immediately charming.

Written by the creator of Hat Toful Boyfriend.

Yeah,

it is a fishing game that is

just full of charm.

And it's a VR game, but it's also got a not VR mode.

So

looks just

up my alley as hell.

That is the case.

It looks cute.

Yes.

It looks...

It looks like it's carrying forward the tradition of Mega Man Legends, which is nice.

Because nothing else is.

Nope.

Not enough games in life with this art style to just make us happy while we play it the bluest of blue skies and like the flattest cell shaded characters clean

uh yeah sushi band check that out as well

um it's pretty much pretty much the deal

um

yeah up on steam you know

would i dust off the vr headset just to see

i don't know where it is

i kept it I kept it.

It's sealed in its box.

I know where it is.

It's somewhere.

It's somewhere in some boxes over there, I bet.

There are proper warnings about

keeping them out of sunlight, otherwise, the lens is fucked.

So I wouldn't be surprised if somebody's sitting there.

Yeah, but who leaves them in direct sunlight just out on a table or whatever?

I would not be surprised if shit was fucked at this point, but I might blow the dust off just to give it

a quick try.

Anyway, let's take some letters.

Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castle superbeastmail at gmail.com.

Oh, we're going to get DD questions now.

Well, now that you've put that out into the ether.

How cool is my character?

Let me tell you the story about something really cool happened while I was playing

Can't Beat My Friends.

Yes.

No, the cool make-believe thing happened, and it was cool.

I know, but come on like

yeah you gotta you gotta

i've okay to be fair i've been around when people have told me cool stories of things that have happened in campaigns and contextually that can be done in a way that

that can work you know what i want to hear though i want to hear bad things that happen in campaigns but a lot a lot of the time it it it just it kind of it bombs i just have to put it out there it just a lot of the time it bombs.

It doesn't always bomb, but it's a difficult thing to do

in a way where, like, it's actually, it's like telling people about your dreams, you know?

Like, most of the time, you're like, yeah, and then this crazy, it's like, yeah, and it's, yeah, yeah, it's a dream.

I mean, yes, crazy shit happened.

You know, every once in a while, they nail it, but most of the time.

Anyway.

Let's see.

We got one coming in.

From

The Wanderer.

Hello.

Hey, The Wanderer.

Hey, Beastie Boys.

I have a major problem recently.

Getting through most of the way in a game and then,

especially with story-driven games, and stopping right before the end.

Happens with games I'm absolutely loving, and I enjoy to play.

I think it's because I have a kind of fear of goodbyes and good things ending, and I know I can just play through it again.

It won't be the first time.

So I don't want to start playing some new games sometimes because I know that if I'll love it and the characters,

then eventually it'll have to reach an end.

Have you experienced anything like this?

And what advice would you have for getting around this?

I'm married to this.

I think I yes, I do get it.

I know what you mean.

And I think that's why games like P4 have that extended goodbye sequence.

I think it's why Undertale has the victory lap.

Games that do that are pretty solid for like letting you go back and say goodbye to everybody and get to fully appreciate what the game's world was about and stuff.

I think that's really good in those cases.

I don't know that this is going to work for you, but I think what might be helpful, what might be cool is actually, as you're approaching that point where you know the game that you're enjoying is going to end and you're kind of like finding yourself reluctant to go back in and do it, start a new thing

and

get a little bit into that thing in a way where once you end this one, you kind of are still looking forward to the other thing that you're just getting started on.

So you don't have to wait to hit the credits to start the new game.

Maybe even start a little bit earlier to get yourself kind of invested.

And then when you wrap it up with the current one, it's not as like, ah, fuck, you know, but you've already got this other thing.

You're like, okay, well, this is starting on the way up.

So it never kind of hits that zero.

So I'm seeing some folks in the chat point out, like, I never finished Lost Judgment, but this isn't what's going on when I don't finish a game.

I get distracted.

I get distracted by a new thing and then just fall off the other one.

I am absolutely married to this type of person.

Paige and I, Paige was like, Oh, you never saw Will and Grace.

I never saw Will and Grace.

So, we started watching Will and Grace, one of my wife's favorite shows from her younger days.

And that show is great.

And then we got to, I shit you not

one episode from the finale and did not finish watching that show for like a year

because Paige had never seen the finale

and could

ever.

I'd be like, oh, so we're going to finish watching it?

Just like

just like Hemmed and Hod.

And

so my advice to anyone in this situation, she didn't finish Breaking Bad.

I think she's one episode from the end of Breaking Bad.

Wow.

Like, she just does that.

She got really into a show called Justified because it's got the Cowboy Ghoul Man in it.

Cowboys.

Yeah, big.

And she was like rabid in it.

And then she got to like the last season.

Oh, my God.

And then just stopped watching it entirely.

Oh, my God.

So

the way to do that is...

The way to get over that is to have your

loved one also watch the show or play the game with you and then just escalate the annoyance more and more and more and more,

right until it's about to become like a weird problem.

And then you'll be like, fine.

And then what?

And then you'll play it or finish it.

And then you'll begrudgingly like break the glass.

And then you'll be like, ah, yes, that was good, actually.

Okay.

I suggest my thing, but you can try that too.

dang

dude it drives me it drives me crazy there's like you know what

you know what else drives me crazy i showed this off on stream the other day we were eating pizza and paige was like can i have a bite of your pizza and i said no

because you're gonna eat to have a bite of this pizza and then tell me it's gross and go ugh

And I'm like, no, I'm not.

She's like, no, I'm not.

And then she took a bite and she's like, oh, gross.

It's got pineapple.

Now Now my mouth's all itchy.

Awful.

Like,

stop taking my food to tell me it's bad.

Why did you ask?

Stop doing that.

That's one less bite.

I could have had that and I would have enjoyed it.

Also, you're allergic to pineapple.

See,

the bite is not wasted if the bite is always enjoyed, no matter which direction it's going in.

But when the bite is not enjoyed,

now we're down a bite.

Every day is an adventure in Clown World.

I think I'm well prepared for D and D, actually, come to think of it.

And one last one from Tom, who says, Dear gladiator and dictator,

a longtime fan and fellow Street Fighter nerd here, I have a theory about Sakura,

and I think she was designed to perhaps be the ken to Akuma's Ryu.

And I figured I'd run it by you to see what your thoughts are.

Just like Ryu and Ken have opposing characteristics and mostly similar mechanics, but some differences, I feel like Sakura was designed to oppose Akuma.

Character-wise, Akuma is an angry old man with Sakura as the inverse being a happy young girl.

Mechanically, they're both Shotos.

One has a command jump that does a normal DP, fireball, and hurricane kick formula.

Most of all, they're fireballs.

Both can charge their fireballs, and

one can fire them diagonally downward in the air, while the other can go diagonally upwards from the ground.

I feel like Capcom designed Sakura with Akuma in mind, and their connection is when they gave her the Shon Goku Satsu as an Easter egg in some of the Versus games.

I'd love to hear which.

No, they want to put a high school girl in the game.

Yeah,

the answer is: what if cute girl?

Actually,

what if cute girl did the thing

that the main character has been doing?

That's cool.

Not the first time.

We've seen it before.

From Kyoko in KOF all the way up to Lily, who's currently doing T-Hawks moves.

Fucking Noriko and Gunbuster.

It's just what if a cute girl did the thing.

What if there was a cute girl there?

Did the thing.

Also,

I mean, look, it's, yes, that is a stretch.

Going with the directions of the fireballs too is a bit much.

That is, that is, that does have some meat to it.

But, but, like...

That part, absolutely.

But at some point, Ryu's storyline is linear.

It can only go in one direction.

It's about fighting, it's about masters, and it's about students.

So at some point, he was going to have to get a disciple of some kind.

And

I know that the bit here is actually...

Here's where you actually are close in the sense that Aki Man designed Sakura

because

he thought that there were too many cool characters that were all like cool edge being designed for Alpha 2 and not enough like outside of that spectrum characters or not enough weirdos either.

For example, like, he wanted Honda in that, and he knew that they would reject characters like that, and that they would reject her as well.

And sure enough, when he pitched her, they did.

Because Alpha 2 was when they were on that kick, because Guy and Rose and fucking Charlie, you know, were like the coolest fucking

Edge characters.

That's a cool cast, man.

Yeah.

And,

you know, they're like the girl in the Sailor Moon kind of reference character.

No, No, that's not going to cut it.

But then eventually the director was like, oh, that is cool, actually.

That's different.

That's interesting.

And there was also a bit where Bengus really enjoyed the fact that it was not just Ryu and Kennegan who he had to kind of stick by what existed.

He had a brand new Shoto to work from scratch with and really liked drawing her as well.

So

she was created to be the anti-edge in a way.

But the weird part is that Sakura is cool, you know, but just not cool in the same sense of like stylish stylish, kind of cool with hair, JoJo hair, you know, which is what they were doing at the time.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, Tom, you did not cook, but

you know.

The diagonal fireball thing was alright.

But yeah, we know why she exists.

When you hit forward on medium kick, you can see her underwear.

It's the flower, it's a bloom, um,

a bloom kick, or so, yeah.

In any case, bring back Sean.

He deserves better.

No.

Sean deserves shit.

But neither did Dan.

But now look at him.

Yeah, I like Dan, though.

Exactly.

That's my point.