CSB 287: Making It Annoying Is Based Actually

Yo-Yo.

Good afternoon, Wolves.

Hello.

What's up with your lighting?

You're like in shadow.

Yeah,

I don't want the bright in my face for a moment.

I'll turn it on a little later, but I kind of, my eyes need a little rest right now.

Okey-dokey.

It's fairly close.

So, what's happening with you, guy who is clearly hungover?

I am not hungover.

Those are untrue allegations.

I am not hungover.

I simply am just not looking for that right now.

Whatever, it's fine.

Dark lighting is chill.

We can, you know, villain it up a little bit.

Hey,

how about this?

Let's start here.

I'm a latecomer to the Like a Dragon franchise.

I'm learning quite late about

the weird ins and outs and twists and jokes.

It's like 23 fucking games now.

Am I correct in that this is not anything that anyone could have called we are all confused and flabbergasted as to why Majima is Jack Sparrow all of a sudden.

This is everybody being taken by surprise, right?

This is not like, oh yeah, there was that one side quest that one time where he wrote Yardi Har Har.

Okay, so there was that one side quest that one time.

Okay.

In Yakuza Dead Souls, where you could could get a pirate costume?

And it looks just like the pirate costume that he's wearing.

It's just red instead of purple.

Is this a joke?

So

the whole pirate Yakuza and Hawaii game, the whole

premise and synopsis

fucking leaked on a 4chan like six months ago.

Oh, yeah.

And like, it was completely ignored because it was so stupid And so,

this is someone making bullshit up.

Shut up.

Get out of here, idiot.

Yeah.

So Majima has.

So, okay, so let's go through the steps.

The steps are

they built Hawaii as a new location.

Step two is

what excuse are we going to have to get every character in the series over to Hawaii specifically so that we don't have to make a new area,

right?

Like every time it happens, like, hey, we made, we made, uh, we made an Osaka area.

Well, guess there's going to be lots of plots going down to Osaka.

We made a Yokohama area.

Well, guess there's going to be a lot of plots that just happen to go to Yokohama, etc., right?

So, that, so the next game was always going to take place in Hawaii, right?

Um, as for Majima himself,

um, what it appears to be,

what genuinely, is that Majima wakes up with amnesia because that's really convenient.

And a child sees him and asks him if he's a pirate because he has an eye patch.

And he goes, I guess I am a pirate because I have an eye patch.

Pirate.

Pirate.

And then the world becomes pirates.

Yeah.

And some people are wearing t-shirts.

Like it's like it's not particularly going too strict on Samoa Joe is there.

And Samoa Joe is, in fact, there.

Yeah.

Okay.

So

basically,

adults getting hit in the head one too many times,

creating their own realities,

is also this franchise.

It also gives a really good excuse to reset Majima.

So Majima, okay.

So you played Yakuza Zero, in which Majima was like way more normal.

Way more normal.

And after Zero came out, like they had him be crazy guy, but he could just like turn it off and like have a normal conversation with you.

And this represents a nice way to reset his personality to like

a regular main character instead of the Joker.

And I guess like

we've established that like this franchise can go to the moon.

It doesn't matter.

Oh, it can, whatever, dude.

Yeah.

I love,

I saw a tweet about this, and I think it's great because we have like focus-tested, I think it was like the chosen awakening

dawn,

like Horizon Zero Dawn as titles.

And then over the RGG guys are like, he's a pirate, he's Yakuza, and he's in Hawaii.

That's the game.

Yakuza Pirates

or Or Pirate Yakuza, excuse me.

Yeah.

Although, what was the Japanese name?

I saw something about that.

I heard that it was even more blunt.

Yeah.

Let me see if we can.

Yakuza Pirates in Hawaii.

I mean.

Yeah.

I'm not going to be able to find it.

Okay.

Oh, Yakuza like a pirate dragons of hawaii is that real no

that's not real okay wait hold on no no there's like a dragon pirate yakuza in hawaii

and

is it like a pirate no that's not that's just a name

okay all right all right well anyways anyway whatever he's got an eye patch that makes him a pirate wild speed pirates also

there was there's a really wild like pre-order bonus on the page that's like hey if you pre-order the game you can get all these bonus pirates and it's like, Kiryu and

Ichiban, and you know, shit like that, like non-canon things.

But there's an entire row of characters on that list that are dead.

Oh,

well, not in this world.

It's like they're alive.

Go nuts.

That dude's been dead since the aughts, man.

The fuck is Samoa Joe doing there?

That's wild.

Oh, the same thing Danny Trejo was doing?

Yeah.

I hope that's not.

The same thing that all those bullet club guys are doing in Yakuza 6.

I hope they get his brass music out and blop, blah, blah, blah, blah.

When he shows up.

That'll be great.

It's one of the goofiest things about, like,

weirdly enough, the pirate Yakuza shit is not the goofiest thing to me.

Do you remember a little while ago where we read an article where

the actors in Netflix's live-action Yakuza were like, we didn't play the games.

We want to do our own thing.

Yeah, they instructed us not to.

We booted it up and they ran over and slapped the controller out of our hands.

Okay, one of the dudes on the character site of like guys that'll join Majima's pirate crew that kind of looks like Majima is played by the actor who is playing Majima in

the fucking Yakuza Netflix movie.

Wow.

Okay.

So like they're like, okay, don't play it.

He's like, what if I played a different character inside the game?

Would that be okay?

You know, would that be cool to do?

I have to say that like, I'm surprised it's not as simple as, yo, Majima loves One Piece, and he was reading it one day, and that was.

I mean,

you could just do it.

There's no reason you can't do it.

If Ichiban loves Dragon Quest, why can't Majima love One Piece?

Everyone does.

It's that simple.

You could just do that.

There'd be no problem there.

I mean, I'm assuming about 20% of the missions will be One Piece jokes and references.

Yeah, probably.

There will be a fucking,

I don't know, sake fruit of some kind.

And there will be, yeah, a million weird proportioned people showing up.

So did you did you watch the trailer for

Pirate Yakuza?

Some.

So like one of the things that's interesting is that

Like they that that the the setup of that trailer is like the end of infinite wealth like it's like they're they're treating the story of this series like seasons of a TV show.

Which is wild because they're all like 100 hours long.

Huh.

Then I guess I might have been spared, but I mean, again, it doesn't seem like it matters that much.

So

I suppose the only question is, like,

was there any attempt with the

samurai games at all to like

contextualize them anywhere in the story?

Or is it just this is literally an imaginary timeline world show?

So I never, I never, I didn't play much of the samurai games, but the samurai games were these are historical figures in a unique story that just happened to look, act, and sound just like those guys you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then Infinite Wealth literally says that they were a dream.

That those were dreams that Kiryu had.

Okay, yeah, sure.

Great.

Which is why it was so.

Kiryu stayed up till too late to watch fucking historical dramas and then he fell asleep and he imagined, what if Majima was that sick guy that's in Samurai Showdown?

He was watching a Kurosawa movie, and then that's

yeah.

Okay, well, you know, Sea Dog

of Shimano is pretty cool.

That works out.

Let's see if they can put any attention towards

boating and shanties.

I would like to point out that this feels like the all-time

proof in the pudding that good job, Johnnies.

You got the Judgment series fucking killed.

Oh, man.

Because this was Yagami's turn on the game.

That thing's not coming back, huh?

No.

No, it's not.

Which is weird because you run into the Judgment Gang for like 10 minutes in Infinite wealth.

They're literally just sitting in a coffee shop and you're like, hey, it's you guys.

They're like, hey, where's Yakami?

Oh, he's not here.

He's doing something else.

If the dinosaurs never go extinct, then there's no defeating them.

Right?

Like, that's...

Yeah, I guess you just have to ride it out.

Sucks because, I mean, it feels like between the two versions of it, there was a serious attempt to really push judgment and then push it again.

And Judgment was like pushed as a more serious version of Yakuza because Ichiban was like so, like, so zaney.

And it looks like both the action and the RPG games are going to just be maximum

clown shit.

Like, did you see the gameplay trailer of

Majima where he's throwing out the pirate blades and they're doing like on-fire round trips for like 20 guys?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I guess reality is gone.

The moral of the story is: don't cast real actors for your main protagonists because,

you know, between this and Onimusha,

you're just not going to, it's not going to work out in the end.

You have to do weird roundabout things to get back to that franchise if it's all based on one person whose likeness is owned by a fucking dinosaur conglomerate.

There's also a weird

effect of Majima's

moves in a fight where they showed off in that battle trailer that he can spawn four shadow Majimas

that will fight alongside him and attack and shit like that.

Fuck yeah.

And

like that was a thing that Ichiban saw him do and you're like, oh, Ichiban's so full of shit.

Like it's just Majima's really fast.

So it looks like...

It's like, no, actually, he is is making shadow clones, and they are attacking people.

It is real, they are.

But he did do it in five.

You're right, he told me in five.

No, it's a real thing.

Yeah, he had the shadow clones back then.

I forgot.

Oh, it's been a while.

And are they substitution clones or are they physically real?

Don't answer that.

It's not clear.

It looks like they're just there to fake you out because the moves always end with the real body stabbing you.

Huh.

Okay.

Um

oh god.

I love how Justin's like, no, shut up.

That did happen canonically in this one.

I forgot that that did happen.

Great.

Well, I mean, look, he looks the part, man.

He's got his mouth open.

And again, very Jack Sparrow.

And the attitude is already there.

That man is 59 fucking years old.

I buy it.

I buy it.

Who Johnny Depp?

Yeah, probably.

So yes, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii coming out

in like

five months.

Like the idea, like it's, it's the idea of like catching up to the series is so impossible.

Because they come out every year.

Yeah.

They come out every year.

But if they, if the annualized releases are just complete nonsense, like this, like, if there's no reason reason to feel like you're missing out on the connected story whatsoever, then that's probably fine.

All right.

No,

you don't know that.

So, I can't, okay.

I can't tell you anything in specifics, but I will say that the story very clearly deals with the fallout of the ending of Ichiban's story.

Okay, all right.

And also takes place a highly specific amount of time after Infinite Wealth's ending so that you would be dealing with very specific things that happen in Infinite Wealth.

Forgive me for assuming the fucking pirate game was not connected really besides the intro part you mentioned.

It looks very, very connected.

Yeah, okay.

Though

it has become the how is this in the modern time?

How is this a modern day pirate's time?

Oh, that's probably the funniest thing because when the trailer starts, you're like, it's a historical thing.

And it's like, no.

No, there's buildings and he's riding his bike.

And it's like, 2025.

2025, Majma's doing Uber Eats on his bicycle.

And like, so you're telling me like, like, a fucking, a giant like American Navy, like, you know, aircraft carrier is not pulling up, going, what the fuck are you assholes doing

on the seas surrounding our country?

No, man, because they're all hiding over at Madlantis.

Don't you know about Madlantis?

It's the secret pirate cove.

Does the boat go underwater and lead to a fight club?

No, it's actually a gigantic island that looks like a theme park that is for pirates.

Okay.

So you haven't been...

Okay.

Did you ever go to Purgatory in Yakuza-Zero?

No, huh?

Which one was that?

Purgatory would be the underground casino in the sewers.

I don't think so.

I'm sure in Zero, you went to an underground fighted.

I went to an underground fight club.

Okay, whatever.

So,

in every game, there is a secret underground casino of some kind of lavish wealth.

Right?

And as the games have gone on, the mechanics of the physical location of that casino have become less and less real.

In Guide N,

it's like

50,000 shipping containers in the middle of the Pacific have been like

hashed together to make a gigantic gambling island.

Okay.

And in Pirate Yakuza, it's a whole island that's off the map, inhabited entirely by pirates.

And it looks like a fucking theme park.

Let's see if I can get a fucking screenshot.

And it's called Madlantis.

Okay.

Okay.

And if I'm picking up what you're putting down here as well, so

Majima washing up

on Hawaii is just rolling him closer to Ichiban.

Yeah.

And perhaps he needs to go through his own hallucination adventure so that they can both be on the same page when they

meet up.

So here,

screenshot of the pirate island of Madlantis for you.

Is it Arlong Park?

Yeah, it's Arlong Park.

Okay, we're at Arlong Park.

Yes, got it.

There's like a cruise ship that's hoisted up on top of the mountain in the background.

I didn't even notice.

Yeah, holy shit.

It's yeah, true.

That is a modern cruise liner impossibly lifted.

Don't worry about it.

Dude,

when you did the, I forget the name of it, but the island minigame in Infinite Wealth, there was like a mountain of garbage that was like as big as Mount Fuji in the background of every shot of that island.

And you had to clean that shit up.

Well, shout outs to Team RGG.

Fucking keeping them guessing.

You know, no one can predict.

Well, they said we're going to, we're,

they they said in a recent interview, like, we're going to keep making games about old men doing old man shit.

Right.

And, like, this just screams midlife crisis.

I always

wanted to.

What are you going to do with your time?

I'm going to be a pirate.

Yeah, yeah.

Dad, you're too old to be a pirate.

So here's the question now.

Is this wacky announcement preferable to a judgment sequel?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, okay.

That's no question.

Because the energy is, oh man, this was replacing judgment, but how many people would have wanted the next judgment sequel?

So

Lost Judgment were really excellent, but like, I, people like Majma better than they like Yagami.

It's like, it's just, it's

sure.

Yeah.

And like, when you run into Infinite Wealth, so you run into Majima and Infinite Wealth, and he gives you no expectation that he's going to have a spin-off game six months from the events you meet him.

Hmm.

And I guess, well, yeah, also, this, I mean, the whole direction the franchise is leaning, the dumber the better.

Oh, the franchise is like leaning further and further into nonsense.

Which judgment leans away from, it seems, right?

Yeah, no, judgment was a little bit more serious, a little bit more crime thriller.

Though you do beat the absolute shit out of like 25 high school kids for like 10 hours in judgment.

And the intro, intro, the vibe I got from the beginning definitely made me, it reminded me of watching like Infernal Affairs a bit, you know?

Yeah, no,

that is like where they were going.

The way he's, when, when he does the little trailing mini-game and his eyes go

and lock on, I was like, damn, that's cool, you know, but yeah, it's a different flavor.

But also, it's like, listen, if we're going to have Ichiban be like the new, like the future, right?

And like Majima replacing Kiryu as the old guy is

the most obvious fit in the world.

Because, unlike Kiryu, he doesn't have cancer and he's not aging.

He's not aging at all.

In fact, he looks younger in Pirate Yakuza than he does in Infinite Wealth.

Great.

Yeah, actually, he looks way younger in Pirate Yakuza than he does in Infinite Wealth.

Sick.

Yeah, fan favorite.

Sure.

So, this is probably going to be the new get-in here.

Like this is assuming this one is really good, this will probably replace zero.

Oh, wait, get it as you mean the starting point for the

starting point.

Game 23.

Everyone, start at the pirate game, actually.

No, because he has fucking amnesia.

So new players will get to learn about Majima as Majima learns about Majima.

No, but if the assets that we reuse to make an economic

decision on saving money for this game are all past references, then

I don't know how well that works.

So

speaking of that,

Gene went and spoke, Gene Park over Washington Post, friend of the show, an overall cool guy, went and spoke with the RGG devs about their development style.

And this is me paraphrasing it, but the gist of it was that they're really confused that everybody remakes their whole game every time they do a sequel right i saw that it's it's not like them going like oh we're being super smart by reusing everything they're like why do you guys make new levels

just use the you already made it again do it yeah what is this

i mean shit again you know wind waker uh not wind waker um um Majora's mask.

I'll always bring that up, you know, like fucking grab what you got and do some cool shit with it.

Save some time and money.

I get it.

Like, they have put, this will be the 23rd game in

21 years.

And, like,

there are, like,

there's one really bad one.

Like, the rest are, like, good to really good.

Well, I mean,

y'all have said that like the older it gets the rougher it gets yeah but i mean in the context of when they came out sure the only one that i could i've played all of them except for the ones that were not translated and the only one that was like oh

when it came right out was dead souls

i think um if you're gonna commit to annualized releases, then yeah, recycled assets is to be expected, right?

It's probably,

I mean, it's pick one or the other.

Like, I think, I think annualized releases is usually not a good idea for any franchise.

I mean, you know, KOF included, like, they eventually gave up on that.

But if you are committed to 12-month turnarounds, then it has to be part of it.

Or

it makes sense that it is.

So it's not 12-month turnarounds.

It's closer to like 15 months or 16, right?

But that still gets it out like one a a year, and then every now and then they skip a year.

But like,

I've, I've gone through all of these, and the amount of like, the amount of fat that they leave behind is so little, they're like, okay, how many times do you need to reinvent the Mahjong game?

Yeah, you fucking don't.

That's done.

That's done.

Okay, make new pieces for the PS4 version, you know, like stuff like that.

Okay, what about all the blackjack shit?

Okay, what about fucking Pocket Racer?

What about, you know, there's all these fucking things that you just carried forward.

Just carry forward.

Up res a texture here, maybe there.

Okay, comparison point.

How much,

what does, what's new in the average Muso game?

I don't know.

I could not tell you.

Yeah, yeah, I would love if someone out there had the legitimately could not tell you.

Yeah, like what percentage fresh are we getting?

More characters?

Couple more characters.

A couple more bosses, I imagine a couple more playables, but overall, I'm going to guess 85%

or more kept

maps and models.

Hmm.

So

you played zero, so you remembered that there's this, there's all these little animations you see in the side quests to make up for the lack of voice acting.

And

specifically, there's a little like fist pump move.

That some of the NPCs do when they're talking, right?

It's like, ah, like fist all the way up in front of them.

And like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like they pump it twice, right?

Okay.

That fucking thing

is in every game they have ever put out and it is from Yakuza 1 and they have never changed the animation.

It is the same fucking thing.

I mean, well, now you've got a series staple at this point.

Especially if you move engines and you keep that same bit, then that's on purpose.

Oh, yeah, dude.

Oh, it's it's a ps2 animation and like it's fine it's not like a big fancy cutscene like money animation right it's just like a filler thing you throw onto npc dialogue

um it's

it's

like there's a part where they go okay well we have an emulator that we made i don't know if you know this but we have an emulator that we made for

Sega games for

the Yakuza for the arcades, right?

Yeah.

But like the emulator isn't made to sell old retro games.

It's made to include in the fucking Yakuza's.

It's our own.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they go, okay, what games we got?

You want you want Virtua Fighter this time?

Okay.

You want fucking Outrun?

Yeah, hit it.

I think as well,

a big benefit, too, is that if you are a franchise, that the location being accurate is a part of your appeal, you know, then that's doing a lot of a heavy lifting as well.

Like just watching.

Oh, yeah, that was.

Oh, shit.

It's that place I know.

That was one of the other things they said and the reason why they

why make new levels.

It's like, well, we're shooting like TV seasons of like a drama that just uses real locations around the city.

So like when there's a massive generational leap, yes, they'll remake.

So like Yakuza,

sorry, like a Dragon 10,

we'll go back to Kamarocho and we'll spend the whole time in Kamarocho so that it's, you know, up to super, super double 8K HD

and then begins the process of, do you think we're ever going to go back to Hawaii?

Right.

Well, so I mean, that kind of, that's a partial answer to their question.

Like, why do other franchises like not reuse stuff more?

It's like, if you're not going for location accuracy, you know, going through a set piece level again in a different thing, like you can only do that so much if at doing it at all, right?

Like

any games that are, that are kind of linear about it, like you kind of want to be very particular about like level reuse and things like that.

Yeah, like the more I think about it, like the more impressive it is because like I'm sure it would be a lot easier to write like a much more

like a much grander story in most of these games if it if you allowed yourself to have them take place further than one block away from every other location in the story.

Like, zero takes place exclusively between two city blocks.

Like, you and Nishiki, like, drive out to the country for one cutscene,

right?

But, like, 99% of that plot is taking place within the Kabukicho and Dotenbori, like, districts.

Um, and they've had, like, God, Dotenbori's had, like, what?

six games that have fucked with that area.

Just write something new that could happen there.

Like, if

A Devil May Cry Ladies Knight did come out and it was just like starting at the Cly FOD, working backwards, exact same levels in reverse order, and like

a couple new enemies, but it's the same otherwise,

that would not go over well, you know?

Unless it were DLC or something, but as its own game, that just doesn't work well.

Someone in the chat pointed something out.

In Yakuza 5, there are actually

a bunch of different locations.

It has by far the most amount of locations of any game in the series, and it kind of suffers for it.

Like,

you don't get to spend as long in any of them, and they're not as detailed, and they're not, there's not as much shit going on.

Okay, okay.

Um, so you get to go to Tokyo and Osaka,

but you also get to go to uh Sapporo,

uh,

Sakai, and Fukuoka.

And it's just, there's not a whole lot going on in those areas.

And the feeling they want you to have in most cases, I get is that it's like there's a living city around you.

You're not going to do it all.

Do what you want, do what you can, and move on.

Yeah, but then you run into a weird problem of like, like Sapporo, is that the one with Saijima Sapporo's section?

It's winter.

It's actually like just really small, and

um,

there's like very few quests there, and so it feels like you're just like

you're popping in for like

an hour and a half, okay, and then back to the woods,

okay.

Um,

well,

that aside, if you were going to take a look at a like a dragon game, I would recommend this one.

Yeah, hey, I'm still uh, I'm still intrigued by

the couple hours I played of seven.

So,

um,

but there's a, yeah, there, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things out there in the world, and there's not a lot of time.

So

we shall see.

I think every year is the year that I tell people to give up on catching up on this series.

It is becoming an American comic book franchise

of

like, you gotta just see the one that's gonna be the first gimmick you like and grab it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I get that.

No, and I've already, I've said this on stream a couple of times, but I've pretty much decided that like I'm the approach I'm gonna take to any impossible

sized LPs probably, probably from here on out will be to

regulate and know in advance which side quests to do and which not to do.

And And, you know, and just put that on, because it's just, especially given I'm like once a week recording, you know, it's just like

there's no other way to do it.

You know what?

That's a great plan.

And I tried that plan with infinite wealth and ran into a disaster, which was like, because it's Kiryu's last game, every Kiryu side quest in that whole game is hay.

Right.

You remember this guy from Yakuza 2?

Right, right.

And so it's like, I actually had to go through all of them, which means the Kiryu Kiryu side of that LP, it's like larger than the Ichiman side.

Yeah, you could do it with every other game except for Infinite Wealth.

Infinite Wealth does not allow you.

It's a celebration, which makes sense.

Yes.

No, I get that.

Remember this fucking loser?

Oh, he's dead now.

Oh, darn.

And that's also the approach I would take to something like cyberpunk if I tried to tackle that.

It would just be like, all right, line it up.

Let's take a look and see what every session is going to look like in terms of how many sides to do and how many mains to do and what frequency probably as well.

Without having some sort of like rail there, it's just

a

humongous, insurmountable task, you know.

Oh, yeah, by the way, just since you played Zero, Yuki's back again in Pirate in Hawaii and she looks exactly the same.

Cabaret.

The top hostess at

the Obertarian.

I saw Obertarian on the deck.

She was on the deck.

In her 80s in 1985, man.

Obertarian on the fucking poop deck.

She is 110 plus

by default.

Unstoppable.

Unflappable.

Yeah, no, I need her just doing her best enlightenment pose.

She was born in that fucking leopard sweater.

God damn.

Speaking of Obertarians.

Okay, all right, I like this.

I got to the Silver Samurai case in Phoenix, right?

Ah.

And so we've started that out.

You met Wendy then?

We met Old Bag.

Wendy Old Bag.

I want to get a list of these characters' Japanese names as I meet them just to know what the pun is.

Because I know there's puns left and right.

And

yeah, with all the main characters and everything.

So her being just literally called Wendy Old Bag.

It's like, that's on point.

And I'm like, like, she looks like you can see between the hairstyle and the faces, like, she's going to be the old

gossiping fucking hand with the hand gesture where she does like this.

And of course she does that, you know.

And I was just like, man, this is interesting because, you know, we're in the middle of the,

I just did the investigation.

Right, so I didn't do the courtroom part yet.

But just gathering the evidence, I'm about to start the courtroom part.

But you meet her, and then like she loses her shit, and I'm like, oh, look, look at your crazy, like, extra angry animations that you're displaying here.

That's fun.

I'm like, are we looking, are we setting up a thing where the first villain is just a first case villain, just pure scumbag thief, murderer?

And then the second is like the height of the evil CEOs behind the criminal mastermind, like

the elite, right?

The ultimate untouchable.

I can buy my way out.

Like people who you want to fucking get theirs.

And then after that, the next level up, some old fucking gossiping hen

who doesn't want to talk to you.

That old battle axe down the road that's rooting your shit, your angry mother-in-law.

She needs to get hers, goddammit.

Yeah, no, Wendy definitely fulfills like a nice role as an investigative boss

in that she just doesn't want to tell you anything.

She doesn't want to let you go anywhere.

She's just completely in the way.

If I'm looking at this game's setup of who are the criminals in society, the criminal archetypes that you want to use this game to be like, yeah,

get justice.

You know, that of that fucking old lady.

People are in the way of justice.

That's talking mad shit

down the street and or that unbearable mother-in-law that won't just fucking give up um yeah that's that that's that's a nice one i could see that because uh they especially in in in situations when they have power you know when they get to like when those whispers travel and then everybody fucking bullshits when when they're part of the church congregation and she's in the back kind of just fucking running the whole thing and you can't do anything about it because because she's like, oh, little old me, I don't know what you're talking about.

And then, meanwhile, she's fucking Tony Soprano.

Yeah,

they need to get there, as goddamn it.

So

unexpected, but I dig it.

We'll see what happens with this case.

Still, Samurai case is fucking incredible.

Yeah, and you know,

fun that we're getting like, oh, it's fucking

recurring character, like, oh, Gumshoe showing up, and people kind of coming back around and stuff is fun.

It's not like a rotating cast the entire time.

And it's like, oh, Detective Gumshoe being kind of slow is crucial because that allows Phoenix to investigate and get data from him that he otherwise wouldn't be able to get.

So like

things that I like.

I was like, this is fucking stupid bullshit when I was playing it because he's like, hey, I know you're the defense attorney.

I shouldn't let you have any evidence until it's sprung on you in the middle of trial.

I'm like, that's fucked up.

It's crazy.

Fucked up, Gumshoe.

but you know what?

You seem like a cool guy.

I'll let you examine the scene, I guess.

The concept of surprise evidence, much less shit walking through the crime scene and going, oh, did the CSIs notice this?

No?

Good.

I'm going to take this for later, is so nuts.

It's like, you do it all the time.

It's crazy.

Phoenix lifts like core, like, he might as well lift the gun off the ground to dust it for Prince himself.

Man.

And there's no chain of evidence here.

Yeah.

And just knowing how, like, meanwhile, in North America, like fucking up which evidence or what belongs to which case because you didn't submit it properly is the difference between fucking Cosby walking and Cosby going to jail.

Like, literally, oh,

evidence that was submitted to a civil case was used in a criminal case.

And that made

throw the whole thing out, you know?

Like, it's so by the book, and everything needs to be clearly submitted in advance.

And here it's like, oh, wait, did you lie on the stand?

Hold on.

Try again.

The judge says, give it another shot.

Oh, you lied a second time?

All right.

Well, third time's a charm.

You know, and depending on how.

Hey, this guy's fucking perjuring himself for like an hour.

hour on the stand.

Can we do something?

No, no, you clarify what you meant by your statements, you know?

Literally saying, like, and that's what I ran up to her because I attacked her.

I mean,

you know, Your Honor, this man is sweating profusely and his hair is making electricity symbols.

And then fucking Edgeworth.

I can't believe it, dude.

It's like what you, what my client meant to say is he committed crimes, just not the ones

he's witnessing on the stand right now, you know?

Like, oh, you fucking asshole.

How did he get his own games?

How did he get his own games?

It's crazy.

It's crazy how he got spit offs.

That's really interesting because i can't let it go i it's got

this

it's this really interesting thing because like it feels like you like the fact that you came to phoenix write uh

30 years right later right is and you see that edgeworth has two spin-offs he's been a character for the whole time and you're like well how bad could he be but you forget that when they're writing phoenix write one

they weren't planning for edgeworth to have a fucking spin-off series 20 years later of course i'm that's what i'm assuming so but like it it does yeah i and because of those spin-offs i kind of just took that as like ah yes the other guy you know who is clearly like phoenix's rival but surely somewhere inside there's a moral compass that is you know it might not be the same type of compass it might be much more cutthroat but he still follows his zone fuck that

no I got an updated autopsy report where I squiggled in a new detail that I may just.

Nah, though.

Updated report.

Yeah, it's kind of prove I didn't falsify this report.

No.

I always get my verdict, which is real attorney shit.

Yeah, it absolutely is.

You know, it doesn't matter whether I think he did it or not.

I'm here to.

It's an adversarial system, man.

Yeah, so anyway,

we're going to see where that's going.

But

Sean.

But don't worry, you can cheat too.

You do have a magic girl with you.

Who literally uses the magic.

Yeah, I saw that.

That is cheating.

That is

allowed.

Yeah, you didn't even win in the second case against Red White.

Like, you didn't win.

You just, you summoned the ghost of fucking the dead to show up and start reading the Epstein black book list, and then it was over, you know?

So, you didn't even really get your full comeuppance there.

I'm such a good lawyer because I have a magic person.

It's also surprising because it's like, I kind of was like, oh, you're going to get him in a legal conundrum, but he'll probably still have to come back to be like found guilty.

But it's like, no, wait, you're not the prosecutor you're the defense attorney so like

he just confesses and then i guess i don't know we'll see what happens you know like you need to you need to do something really important with the phoenix right universe is that the phoenix right universe only exists in the room that your characters are currently in yeah okay so okay knock-on effects or like natural consequences of the shit that you are going through don't worry about that like we have established and like a courtroom of people saw this bitch turn into a ghost

and be like, it was him.

And like, let's ignore the whole idea that the court system would dramatically change with these types of people around because it'd be really fast to just do that over and over.

Ignore that.

I mean, it would be one thing if it was like, oh, it's just, it's just me, uh, Maya and like her eyes are kind of glowing a little bit, but only Phoenix notices.

But she physically transforms.

She gets taller.

The fucking her back straightens out.

The boobs grow.

Like, it's wild.

She actually transforms, yes.

You know, I don't know.

And I'm assuming the voice changes too, if that would be the case.

But

yeah, so it is a wild one, though, to kind of have these cases where you're like, okay,

you are defending an innocent person, and the actual culprit is a witness who's sitting there.

He's right there.

But, like,

this is not them on trial.

This is you trying to find your client not guilty.

Yeah, but the best way to do that is to convince the murderer to fucking confess right there on the stand or have him froth out the mouth and collapse.

And then, and then they get arrested, and off camera, like Edgeworth has a second trial where he's like, they confessed on the stand in front of 100 people.

And

you don't get to see that part.

You don't get the justice, you know?

Well, you have to remember, Woolly, after their confession, their soul dies.

Right.

And they are unable to speak.

True.

Like, yeah.

No, kind of like

Darby.

Like, they just literally,

their soul escapes their body.

Yeah.

Like,

imprisoned.

So that's it.

Right.

Yeah, so anyway,

I'm fully in preparing myself for that too as well, where it's like, you know, you're going to get those satisfying moments, but you're not going to get

the prosecutorial side of things, you know?

I mean, shit, that feels like it could be like another character that's not Edgeworth.

That is like the person who,

whenever Felix sets him up, you got another DA to

lock him down, you know, basically.

You'd need the person representing the people to fucking lock up whoever confesses in that last one.

anyway

Yeah, those games are incredible

Yeah, we also so yeah finished off Dino Crisis one

and Congratulations.

Yeah, that's a fun little romp in a in a survival horror setting that mixes things up and does it a little differently with dinosaurs instead of zombos.

So yeah,

would you believe me now if I told you that Dino Crisis is definitely the weirdest of all all of those games from that era, I believe it.

I believe it.

It's fucking so strange.

I mean, I can, you know, the idea of running down the hallway and putting a laser barrier up instead of like, you know,

shooting is kind of like, there's something to like, oh, let's board off this wall, this window, you know, instead of like just wasting bullets on things.

But it does, now that it's all said and done, it is, in fact, a shame that

the worst parts of that game are what should have been the best parts, which is the T-Rex encounters.

You know, that sucks.

And it's just

a product of the time because the gameplay elements were worked out.

Survival horror was understood at that point, but the

cinematic boss encounter, they just didn't know the best ways to go about those.

And in the end,

you had like, yeah, these three kind of fake boss fights or four for that matter and i was always hoping i'd get a real one and i never got a real one you know um

and my understanding is like even

well no no okay well i was just gonna I was gonna say, like, even with like, you know, like Tyrant and Nemesis and stuff, like, everything I've always, I remember hearing about and stuff, and is that, like, you, there is a fight, right?

And you do have to, and then, like, even if it's like, oh, grab your rocket launcher at some point.

No, you fight those dudes.

There is.

You fight the fucking shit out of them.

Yeah.

And like, it does matter what you're doing and how you're doing it and what you're shooting and what's hitting them, you know?

So, like, if I, like, I, I, that burning um helicopter

port fight was a perfect setup to like run around and actually shoot it, you know, but it turns out that was just a stall for time.

And then afterwards, you just get these little cinematic things.

And they're also like based on,

I, I, yeah, I had a weird like time the miss time the grenade properly moment but like it's only when the bite is starting but then like there's iframes in between anyway so I was just like nah I just wanted an honest big boss fight which the game never really gave you

so

but in any case the rest of that was pretty cool and it was fun as well to

you know you pick your paths on who you're gonna follow and then by just exploring a bit and making my way through I I was able to catch that asshole, Doctor, and fucking hit him with the roundhouse kick.

Man, I don't remember shit about that fucking game.

Oh, yeah, there's like an evil asshole.

Well, there's, there's, there's literally, there's Dino Birkin, right?

There's Durkin, as we called him.

There's Dino Wesker, you know, there's,

there's all, yeah, there's all kinds of, you know, and you're just like, yeah, okay, we got it.

You gotta, you gotta use this

nonsense science to create the third energy.

But incidental to this, like,

limitless energy source, dinosaurs happened to pop out, but they were never the goal.

Isn't it awesome that it had nothing to do with like Jurassic Park?

We made dinosaurs in a lab at all.

Isn't it awesome that it was accidental time travel of dinosaurs?

We were going for some other shit and like they just walked through the portal.

And everyone's kind of ignoring it too.

They're like, yeah, that's that's really that sucks.

Anyway, about this fucking stabilizer and initializer and the third energy, you're reading all these notes and they're talking about who the traitor scientist is and da-da-da-da-da.

And it's like, bitch, you're getting your guts ripped out by a pterododon.

Like, like, that's kind of the priority right now.

But yeah, it's completely incidental.

They do a lot of fun stuff with third energy in Dino Crisis 2.

Cool.

Okay.

Because, like, the setup of that game is the opposite of the first one where the island got transported back in time and then got transported back forward in time.

Okay.

So like the dinosaurs were hanging out and then the island showed up where they were Okay.

And then they started to live there and then they the island went back.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, well, I guess we'll have to see, you know, but

I definitely am reminded of like, you know, the Parasite Eve kind of vibes with this whole thing.

But, um,

remember when sequels could be a completely different fucking game entirely?

Exactly.

You were like, oh,

cool.

Yeah.

And there was a point where the game is like, all right, we got to do this.

Let's go.

And I'm like, I'm going to take that as the little nod to the player.

Start spending your weapons now.

You're free to start poison darting and grenading whatever you want.

There's a specific musical cue in all of those games that is the open up now,

shoot anything you want.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like a dramatic escape theme that just starts to play and you're like, okay, it's time to turn this game into a shooting gallery.

Because you fucking take out two dinosaurs on the way to a save room early on and then you're out of all resources and then you're like, I am never making that mistake again.

You know, so it just conditions you into being paranoid and then you just have to like play stingy as fuck until the opportunity.

If you play enough of these games, you get like brain problems about your inventory.

Well, I mean, so the whole thing changes once you know exactly what's coming and you've already and you're on a replay, you know, like that.

Oh, no, but I mean, like, if you play enough classic survival horror games, eventually you just become, why would I ever use a health item?

I'll just reload the save if I die and just do it perfect.

Yeah,

yeah, especially when one of the items in taking up inventory space is just a reload from the previous room item.

Like, you can, you can see how all these inventory things happen because I'm playing these at like 11 and 12.

Yeah.

Also,

mixing, like, you know,

you're mixing your herbs, except there's like a giant.

I don't know how, I feel like.

What if you wanted to make V-Jolt every time you wanted a health item?

So every single thing you fucking pick up, right?

There's this like chart that's not in the game that you have to refer to of what you can and cannot mix.

You know, and it doesn't show you, doesn't confirm any of that.

And then also, once you do make something, there are some times where, at the best state, you can no longer copy or duplicate,

you know, or interact with it in the mixing.

So, you always have to keep weaker versions of anesthetic or healing items in order to duplicate and mix those up into the fight.

If you want to mix an aid, a rec aid, an intensifier, a Dart S, A D S plus, A D S,

A D M, A D M plus, A D M plus plus A D L.

Don't do the plus plus.

Don't do the plus plus because if you do the plus plus, Hemo plus plus, Hemo ⁇ MPS, MPS plus, MPS.

This fucking list goes and it goes.

The plus plus is too good and you can't then continue to modify it afterwards.

So keep it at the lower level.

You have to keep it at the lower level with the M before you add it to the enhancer.

I don't know what the fuck they were thinking because RE3 had an ammo mixing mechanic and the ammo mixing mechanic has a file that is in your inventory when you start the game.

And the only way to get rid of

the item to get your full slots is to read it.

And it goes, A

powder plus B powder equals C powder.

A is handgun, B is shotgun, C is grenade launcher.

Yeah, so I mean, shit, years later, obviously,

you know, the

fear and hunger version of this is like you have your big inventory and then you go to the mixing tab and the mixing tab just has the recipe list, and anything that you've never mixed is just question marks.

But stuff that you had, that you've read about, it'll pop up and say, Oh, you need this plus that.

Or if you just try it randomly and get the result, that'll pop up as well.

And then from then on, you can just go to the result and say, Yeah, make me one of those.

You know, and it'll just grab what it can of your shit to do that.

So, yeah, so I think it's just a time issue, of course, but it definitely lent difficulty to the game that like kind of was born of frustration in a way, which was, you know, the style at the time, right?

If your entire tank controls movement philosophy is

hindering the player

creates stress and that creates

the environment we want.

Annoying is based, actually.

Yes, then of course we're going to give that T-Rex iframes and, you know, not tell you how to mix things and make those dinosaurs respawn on saves and, you know, all that shit, because because that's the point frustration is the point

like it's one of those things that um you see people talk about this with ff14 and i think it's a really good example because people go you know it's just not the same like it was back in the final fantasy 11 days when when it felt like there was so much to discover but nowadays as soon as the patch comes out people data mine it and they

optimize it and whatnot and the one that people um bring up is like the way that like notorious monsters or hunts work in that game is like there's a discord and you go to the discord and a guy will go, hey, the hunt train is meeting at this spot at this server time.

Be there.

Everyone join up into the party.

And then someone has pre-scouted the locations of all the notorious monsters in the entire expansion.

And what we're going to do is we're going to fly as a big group and we're going to just bop them all out in like an hour.

And everyone's going to get all their rewards.

And then the person who's organized it will set the timer for how long it'll take for those to respawn.

And when they respawn, someone will go out and find all their locations and put them into a fucking Google Doc.

And then he'll put up a message on that Discord and he'll say, All right, everybody, it's time to run the Mateus fucking train.

We'll go.

And it's very like rote, right?

It's very much like

the excitement of finding a notorious mob, whatever, right?

And they're like, ah, you know, back in FF11, back in FF11, guys like Max were the only ones who knew the spawn timers and could monopolize that shit forever, forever,

like the whole history of the game, and just own whatever dropped off of that and just own it forever.

And it's like having old survival horror games where they're like, man, it really felt like there was so much to discover.

It's like, that's because it was obtuse.

And it was there to fuck with you.

And you were supposed to to barely scrounge through the game, not understanding half the mechanics.

It is a really tricky balance to go forward in time and keep games up with the speed of internet discussion,

to design games around the idea that I'm playing this in a Discord call with the homies and they're going to just tell me what, you know, shit like or wiki.

Oh, man, I can't beat this boss.

He's weak to fire.

He's weak to fire.

Right.

And, you know, obviously the FromSoft solution of like having people put tips down in the game world is a nice immersive way to do that.

Let's do that.

That's a really nice immersive way to do that.

I think that's great.

I found nearly every hidden wall in Elden Ring as a result of not the chat, but of a player message.

Yeah.

And the understanding that, hey, if you were to play offline someday, like, you know, we still should allow you to be able to complete this.

So yes, there will be a dev message floating in the middle of the air over there.

And you're going to go walk up to that to investigate, how is there a message floating?

But

yeah, I guess like there's still this you and the goal is to still have these moments of like, you know, you're like pushing on when you're out of resources and you're near death and everything's bad in like a souls game, but you just make it past a shortcut and then you get back to the bonfire, right?

Or you see the new one or so.

And running, getting back to the save room, dragging your ass bleeding, but barely making it is supposed to kind of like, you know, cement that feeling as well, I suppose.

But yeah, it's just, there is, there is a, there is always just a balance between like, I think after a certain amount of time with any of these genres, as you get familiar with them, you're like, okay, it's no longer about tension.

It's just about game rules being defined.

And then if I know what those game rules are, I'm going to try to exploit them to the maximum, or I'm going to try to break them, or I'm going to use them to the most, to my advantage, you know, which is, again, what, like, that, that's what, what

Soul Games kind of entice you to do as well with the whole, like, I'm going to stand back here and just fucking deal with that cheat monster shit, because if he's cheating, I'm cheating.

Um, but, um, yeah, when, when, when things like that T-Rex show up, though, and just, you know, give you, like, you're robbed of the actual encounter to give, to create that tension, I kind of...

I think I'm like, how would I have felt about that even when I was a kid back in the day?

And like, I probably, you would have spent more time trying it out until you eventually figured out, like, oh, just run.

And you would have been like,

I personally, I think I would have been just annoyed, annoyed as well, you know?

Like, I think I would have been like, God damn it, that sucks.

Because it turns out the thing I was supposed to do was not, wasn't what I was supposed to do the whole time.

And I would rather those moments be like, I am supposed to do what I think I'm, I'm supposed to, like, I can

see

the goal here is to fight this really hard thing or to get past this really hard obstacle, but it's still like within the rules that I've parsed this game to be under.

Does that make it, do you know what I mean?

Like, when you don't just suddenly strip the whole thing out and make it like guess, but also the answer is nothing.

You know?

I mean, hell, there's a, like, there's a carpet pull moment in case

two in Phoenix, right, where, like, yeah, right before the spirit incarnation moment, you have to go through the, um,

you have to go through the, uh, uh, uh, the dude's airtight revised third version of his story.

Oh, it's, oh, man, you, oh, it's so tight here, man.

It's, you could never find a fucking clue in this.

Yeah, and so you take a second, and then you do, you go, you read through it three times, and you're like, hmm, what am I going to challenge here?

And then, and then it finally shoots you forward to, like, actually, there was nothing to do, you know?

But then, and so, like, hey, man, there's sometimes

there's at least one moment where I remember pressing every single fucking dialogue, and you needed to press every dialogue in one of the later games for them to go, oh, there's nothing.

Okay, damn, so good.

Because I was about to say that I did like that after reading through it, I went through it three times, and then he goes, I don't know what to do.

And then you're like, oh, we're moving forward because he doesn't know what to do.

But it wasn't like try and fail and whiff and or click, click, click that, that, that, um,

that, that, uh, uh, fucking walking dead empty empty gun, you know?

Like,

that's the difference.

That's the difference.

It's like, okay, without, uh, without breaking the entire rule set of what the game is, it eventually goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, we know, right?

We're moving you forward here.

Um, so anyway, yeah, it is, it is an interesting balance for for how we've landed on that now.

Um, anyway, though, good stuff.

I enjoyed it.

Um, I think,

uh,

yeah, that leaves a little more time to push into Shadow of the Urdery.

So

last time around,

did they nerf it in between the last podcast and this podcast?

Yeah.

And that's okay.

I know that's going to be the case for everybody.

Hey, listen.

So I went through those nerfs.

You know what the number one nerf is?

Visibility has been increased on lots of attacks that was

impossible to fucking see.

Cool.

The one thing that I talked about at length that was like, that is out of control.

That is ridiculous.

Dry Leaf Arts R2 got a little better as well.

That's cool.

And yeah, and then, of course, some boss stuff, right?

I

have

more

than accepted that, like, I'm not going to be there on week one for the wild raw versions of these things.

I'm just going to have to get whatever Fromsoft designates their final final vision to be for these things.

So, you know,

they're really in a wonderful position development-wise, because they can put out a final boss that's like horribly overtuned to the point of being like kind of nonsense.

But because everyone's like, FromSoftware Games are so hard, my balls are so big, if I beat it,

complaining about that is like very low compared to what it otherwise would be.

And then they tone it down and it's to what it should have been, and people go, oh, no!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, it should be harder, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah.

This is the most justified nerf they've ever given to any boss they've ever done, like genuinely.

No, I, like, I, yeah, I, I, um,

I do not feel a ways about it.

Uh, uh, I, I've seen a lot of discussion as to that, that feeling and being like, yeah, what, why are you ruining it?

Stop doing that, but yeah, eh,

you know,

it is what it is.

I'm fine by that.

I think we got past,

yeah, we got past Bonnie Village, went up to that cathedral where

there was the

kind of like the maester, and then like the Lady of Night in the Night Armor.

And,

yeah, some plot shit going on over there, but not much to it.

But I did encounter the

outside

mausoleum corpse, which allowed me to then get the Rolana

or

Ranala

twin swords.

And those things are fucking great.

I really enjoy how stylish and fun it is to stance in a way.

People keep saying hands in the chat.

Hands.

Yes.

Do you do any hand stuff?

There's a lot of hands.

There's the big fingers that are in the big fingers area.

You know, that was where, like, it seems to be where the two-finger origin points are.

Okay, so, okay, so you saw that.

Okay, I didn't want to fucking.

Yeah, the points that I'm suspecting are where the Greater Will launched its comets.

It landed.

It launched its comets with fingers, and then they took some fingers and went, that one is going to tell us what to do.

It's.

I love those areas because there's nothing in them other than, ugh,

this

gross alien stuff.

The finger should have been moving a little bit, just to emphasize.

But yeah, and then

it really does look kind of like the Starfall Beasts

or so, where they're like in

the crater of where it landed from space.

You know, you can see that it's like, you know, there's those two map spots.

It seems like that's the communication points.

Pretty interesting.

Gross.

And I.

Yeah.

That's, yeah, I think that was pretty much it.

Oh, yeah.

That one fucking mausoleum.

Not mausoleum, but the walking furnace boy that's like, ah, the rules changed.

You know?

And I'm like,

fully...

I'm reminded of like, I'm riding aggro up to the boss, and then you jump off, get to the Colossus, and you're like, oh, it's another humanoid Colossus.

Let me jump on its ankle.

What do you mean it's wearing high-heel boots?

I felt like my enjoyment over those guys started to rapidly fade when I found that guy.

Just like, hey, we really want you to do.

It's the 11th hour of the game, and we really want you to use the new consumable system.

So we're going to make it so that the only way you can even hurt him.

Make some pots, you fucking idiot.

Use it.

I don't want to use pots.

Shut up.

It's also a weird thing where like the

tier for your flask you get, the deflecting tier from the first one

is like by far the best reward you get from any of them.

It's not even close to that.

Nothing comes close to that after, huh?

And it's like...

That thing carried me through like the last third of the fucking DLC encounters.

Man.

I mean, like the fact that it's like, there's a description for like, this is what the pot does when you throw it backwards while riding torrent.

Yeah, that's never going to happen.

You're like, on what fucking planet do you think I'm going to Mario Kart red shell a pot?

Never.

Like, that sounds like an awesome cinematic moment, but that's so not going to happen in the flow of gameplay.

You know?

Yeah.

Madness.

Absolutely absurd.

Yeah, I actually uninstalled Elden Ring recently, and I was like, man, what an incredible game.

I don't think I'll ever go back to it ever again after beating that DLC.

Well, you did two, right?

Yeah.

Technically, but also,

it's like six Souls games.

It's

so many.

What I would actually really like to do is replay just the DLC.

So

what's interesting?

Can you?

No.

I'm sure somebody has like a hack save game, you can just do

it'd be interesting to yeah, cuz I guess once it's done, it's done, but um mods for that.

Okay, um

What happens in these games if you

un oh no, wait, it's patched.

Never mind.

Okay, um

What you're describing is interesting because I'm like, yeah, I do feel as well like I need you need some space before you come back to a souls game.

And then you're like, right, I'm refreshed.

I'm good to go on that.

But for some reason, like, I feel like Bloodborne is a little immune to that because the setting is so cool and different that, like, I'm not getting any Yarnum scratched by Elden Ring.

Well, you know, Bloodborne is also, like,

way shorter.

Certainly.

Yeah.

But, like,

transforming weapons and stuff and overall just, like, that, that, you know, fucking gothic setting is like, that itch is not at all scratched.

Um, so you should play Eliza P, then, yeah, I guess that's where you go because that's like a very direct, like, man, there ain't enough bloodborns coming out.

Um,

so anyway, so that that continues.

Uh, I want to give a shout-out.

So, I went yesterday to watch, okay, now it's getting dark.

I'm going to turn the light on.

There we go.

Hey,

um,

Reboot Rewind

is a documentary series, and there was a special airing of the first two episodes here in Montreal yesterday.

For you.

For me,

in my private theater.

Yeah, no,

the people behind it,

shout out to Raquel.

And so they are airing.

There's going to be eight episodes total.

They aired the first two, which were each an hour long, in the, it was the same place where they do the Fantasia Film Fests, you know, so like the Concordia theater buildings.

Those things sold out, you know, it was pretty nuts.

Like, they did multiple cities, and like, yeah, they sold out everywhere that they did.

And it's just, yeah, they've, they, this is the same, the reason why you've been hearing or seeing tweets about reboot and stuff a bit more frequently now.

Is it coming back?

So they found the old D1 tapes, which was like the highest quality recordings, and then they were able to track down a machine to

ask people for like, does anybody have this machine?

And so they did eventually find a machine.

And it's like, again, these things are so old and just unused.

And it's incredible.

But like they, to get the best quality versions of these old tapes and these old and the old show, they were able to convert the whole thing.

So they commenced that process and then reboot officially, mainframe officially put out like episode one, you know, in like the full quality version as well.

And it's, it's pretty awesome to see like, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah, going back, it's almost like when you go back to old film reels and you're like, yo, we can practically go to 4K with this almost, you know, if you just convert it properly.

But

yeah, that was all part of the same group of people that were like just doing, filming a documentary, talking to the creators of reboots and getting behind the scenes on everything.

And I was expecting this to kind of be like, yeah, so, you know, we got started.

Here's some of the sketches.

Over the years,

if you've been a reboot fan, you've kind of paid attention to some of the announcements and some of the stuff, and you've been following and seeing some of the sketches.

Art books, Brendan McCarthy, the guy behind Judge Dredd, who

worked on it.

There's some fun connections there where I've mentioned before,

an episode called Bad Bob, where it's Mad Max there basically was used as the direct precursor to Fury Road, and then he went and worked on Fury Road, and that's why it became what it was.

That's such a one-to-one interaction.

Usually there's like a couple more steps, and did you you know that the person who blah blah blah it's like, no, I remade the Mad Max episode of Reboot into Fury Road.

I did it.

Yeah.

It's these weird deep cuts are like, they're there, and you can go see, like, oh, yeah, no, he directly sent the episode

by Bad Bob of Reboot to George Miller, who then was like, oh, shit.

You know, and then one thing became another.

But anyway, so this whole process of, yeah, getting, getting those little tapes.

Yeah, Linus Tech Tips who was able to help them with the conversion process.

This whole story was

it's crazy because it starts out way, way earlier before any of the first notes we knew about.

It goes into such insane detail, and it's one of those things where they set out to basically shoot a documentary, perhaps like two hours or so, and they ended up with just infinite hours of interviews, infinite hours of sketches that were never uploaded anywhere, way more material, resources, and wild stories about the production of this thing

than they expected.

And what I was so happy about, because it was really, really incredible and interesting, like what was the emphasis on that part in my reboot video where I'm like, yeah, a lot of people kind of wonder when they see reboot these days, like they go, hey, Wooly, why are you into this weird, janky-looking 3D thing?

The walking animations are so goofy and the lighting is weird.

And it's like, true, but if you compare it to its contemporary competitor, nothing.

Fucking nothing.

You'll notice that the lighting is actually quite nice and sophisticated, you know?

And it really, really takes that point and emphasizes how they made a 3D show out of nothing before Toy Story came out when no one even understood how to use CG in this way.

Yeah, I remember sitting there and seeing the commercial, the very first commercial for reboot, and like my hair blew back like Thrill House.

Yep.

Whoa.

Yep.

They straight up, like, yeah, they, they just pioneered a style that like didn't exist.

And I, same thing.

When I saw that, I was like, I want to do that.

I want to work for that company.

I want to make that.

Whatever that is.

Like, I need to know more about that.

I was fucking, yeah, enthralled by it on site, you know?

And that was all just coming from this, this, like, computer graphics and silicone graphics at the time were just these things that were like, oh, you want your fancy commercial to have, like, some text and space that goes, whoa,

that's crazy, dude.

That's all, yeah.

And then using those, those machines to basically, like, slowly build a goofy-looking person.

Um, and then they, they made the uh, Dire Straits

music video, which had like 3D characters walking around in it.

And, like, that's kind of like the, where the whole thing started.

Um,

so it kind of, yeah, in

when they kind of did, yeah, they did money for nothing, and then those characters showed up as cameos later on, and so on.

Uh, it's just crazy to see the amount of people that are like, okay,

you're you're telling me you want to use this machine to do what you want to, you want to take a typewriter and make a movie with it?

How does that make any sense?

You know, like, how do you

and you're like, you're like, and I need to quit my job to believe that this is actually gonna happen are you sure this is gonna happen are you 100 certain for the love of god you know um

and like like like at some points there were people at the the early mainframe staff that were like they were so it was so like a uh a cheap and shoddy setup initially that they were in a hotel room just running making the show you know um as you do of course and like one of the employees working at the hotel was like oh that looks cool i wouldn't mind trying that out.

Do you have any experience?

Nah, not really, but it looks really cool.

And then like went up, did an interview, and they're like, yeah, you know what?

Fuck it, get in.

And then he went downstairs, quit, changed his clothes, and then went up to the same hotel room and just started working, you know?

And his boss, that he quit, then brought him his lunch like later that day.

It's like that level of just like, oh man, they scrounged to put this thing together.

You got a degree in theoretical physics, buddy?

I have a theoretical degree in physics.

All right, that's good enough.

Good enough.

You know,

yeah, and then the process of doing all that while making deals with like YTV and ABC, which is the American distributor and stuff, it took like

the first two hours of

that just went by and like they barely got to like, okay, now we're ready to get the first episode done.

You know, it didn't, like, it just started getting to like the airing,

the show part in in in all the setups so if you want any if you're interested in reboot at all and like you want to know anything about how it was made this is the most definitive insanely detailed amazing uh collection of of yeah just data that is important to have you know literally for posterity for the history books because the other thing too is like

This show was made by a bunch of old British guys, you know, and like they

like have these incredible like bits and details and stuff, but you know, not all of them are around anymore, you know, and there's a window of time that you that closes as like this kind of show will just eventually be like, oh yeah, that one obscure thing that kind of happened some time ago.

So getting it now is pretty important.

And that's what they managed to do, you know?

So

yeah, huge shout out to that.

And just obviously exciting and fun to, you know, walk into a room with other people that fucking love Reboot and

are in there, you know, a proper opportunity to wear the merch.

Saw Levi, saw Mike Zero Dude, who haven't seen in a minute, rocking

the reboot hoodie as well.

And

the, yeah, and that was a what other time than to rock that mainframe team jacket that uh y'all brought down with you last time.

Thank you very much for that, by the way.

It was uh, the wife was very excited to see you wearing that jacket.

She was clapping and shit.

It was a flex.

I was like, ah, shit.

Everyone was like, yo, what the the fuck?

Where'd you get that?

And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

Got the mainframe team jacket.

It was very, very sick.

So

I'm so shocked that it fits you so perfectly.

It does.

It just happens to.

Yeah.

It's great.

Like, cause, like, there's so, like, it was, it was a, it was a jacket, like, from somebody on the staff.

So, like, it could have been any size.

It could have been anyone.

It could have been way too small for you.

Yeah.

It's, uh, anyway, it is a mystery, you know, but

that is that is that was very fun.

So they're going to start airing it on

the 24th.

So literally tomorrow.

If you go,

if you go to the reboot

rewind Twitter, you can see like the direct links and stuff, but it's going to be on, there's a YouTube channel, and it's also going to be airing on

a subscription service as well.

Shit, I don't have the details exactly, but

post them on social media later.

Yeah, but go check them out.

Eight episodes covering the exhaustive history of reboot, and

super duper interesting if you're at all, if you at all love that, that series like I do, and you want to find out about how it was made.

Yeah, Telus Optic TV

and Stream Plus is where that is.

Cool.

So beyond that, and a bunch of people, like, you know, at one point, the intro is playing, and you're like, man, this is a room of people that have been waiting 30 years to just yell, Reboot!

At the same time, you know,

yeah, everybody, everybody feels it.

And everyone has that same story of like, I saw it and I didn't know what I was looking at, and I was blown away by it.

So, a lot of fun there.

Speaking of having a lot of fun, yo, fucking fucking Astrobot.

Astrobot is so weird.

It's so fucking

funny.

It is a really, really great video game.

And it's like, man,

remember all your friends, your friends that you love?

And you're like, yeah.

And then you turn it off and you're like, they're dead.

You know, like, like in the moment, you're like, yeah, I love these guys.

And then as soon as you walk away, you're like, they died.

Well,

you know, there's like, it's like, oh, look, there's like some Capcom characters and there's some characters from other, you know, non-specific Sony franchises.

But also, there's a fucking pocket station.

You know what I mean?

Like, yeah.

It took me like 10 minutes to remember the name of it.

I was looking at it going like, what?

I know what that is.

I know what that is.

It's the Chocobo minigame.

Yeah, it's the not VMU.

It's the Sony VMU, but it ain't.

It's a piece of fucking shit, and it never came out in English.

Oh, my God.

The fucking pocket Station.

Yeah, it's a collection of all the IPs that Sony does not have, lest we forget.

And it also, like, it's drowning itself in this thing where, like, Sony had such a good spot with, like, these weren't PlayStation characters.

Yeah.

These were not Sony characters, but somehow you thought of them as such.

They kind of, yeah, they kind of landed there, right?

Well, because because Metal Gear Solid is a flagship franchise that just became a PlayStation thing, you know, like even though they, they weren't fully committed to that the entire way through, Final Fantasy also for years was kind of just that.

They don't own those characters, they're not, they're not theirs, but where else are you going to go for them?

Yeah, it's got that association.

Like, Alucard is not for

yeah,

but but then you just, you just buy association, get in there, and then the ones who are, obviously, you see Crash and you see Jack and Daxter and

so on, Ape Escape.

But, like,

you.

Does anyone.

Did you make me remember the main character's name from Ape Escape?

I don't know.

His name is Spike.

Okay.

What I can do.

Because he's got spiky hair because of polygons.

He's got that OG pro tag here, hair, with the two colors ready to did a da-da-dool.

But what I'm like, what I was, when you get to that point, I'm like, oh, they're committing a level to this, they're putting a whole mechanic in.

Let's see if they have the courage to make it so that you use the right stick to throw your net down, R1 to jump,

and the D-pad to fucking

move the camera, you know, or whatever crazy shit was going on.

I remember being like the analog stick for like swinging the net.

And I was like,

and I look back on it like, man, that game changed like control like shit.

It was nuts.

It was nuts.

Yeah, before twin analog was just a standard.

But then you get to shit like God of War level and you're like, oh, we are lovingly spending our time advertising

our God of War game, specifically Ragnarok as well.

Out now.

Yes.

On PC.

Buy it, please.

Here's our remix theme.

Here's our mechanic that has extra love and extra details put into it.

The whole area, like the level keeps going.

It is quite a like, yeah, the series is alive.

We're still making this.

So here you go.

Please go buy.

You know,

if there was not a link that led me to the store page right afterwards, I would not have been surprised.

So,

um,

and yeah, I guess, like, you know, and in between that, you're, you're, you're running into things that you're like, oh, whatever happened to this or that or stuff.

And

I get it's it's a

mixture between, hey, look, all these fun cameos, hey, remember that, and also a bit of that Deadpool and Wolverine feeling of like, and for some of these, perhaps a Vikings funeral, perhaps a send-off, you know, in cutesy form.

But in the middle of all that, just some fucking fun platforming.

Yes.

Some joy, like some classic rare style, put cute eyes on everything and have it bounce to the left and right to the music.

You know?

But is it as good

as Concorde?

Um,

well,

did it cost a questionable amount of money to make?

Uh, bro, those two games coming out right next to each other is like legitimately the funniest fucking thing ever.

It's great.

I love it.

The future of Sony is Astro Boy.

The future of PlayStation is Astro Boy.

And you know what?

I don't think anyone was talking about it in production or leading up to its release.

I think it was like, hey, that was...

It was like two weeks before it came out.

The people were like, oh, Astrobot, though.

Yeah, because,

again, it was just like, oh, yeah, the really fun platformer from the PSVR collection.

That's great.

And then in retrospect, after release, it was like, oh, fuck, this is a really fun platformer.

You know, simple, good, to the point.

And, you know, you climb walls,

you use your stretchy arms powers.

You grab your enemy boss by the tail and spin it into the fucking distance.

Like, you know, it's doing everything it's supposed to do.

But yeah,

I hit the, there's like an octopus boxing boss that you fight with like little punching tentacles at you.

And it's incredible.

It was a really fun boss fight.

And I'm like, yeah, this is all the fun I'd have playing a Mario Galaxy-style game or so.

Like, loving that.

It was great.

Hey, you guys should make more of these.

They don't cost that much either.

Didn't seem like it.

Yeah, I

mean,

if people were talking about it in advance, I definitely didn't see much wind of it until what's going on.

The only person I knew who talked about that game at all before it came out was Gene going, yo, AstroPot looks hot!

And he was like, like an Astrobot believer on Twitter for like a couple weeks beforehand, getting excited for Astrobot.

It really is.

And

it's wild, though, because the feeling was the best.

Well, it was a really good platformer on PSVR, but the VR element to it is what made it feel so unique and fun.

The fact that you're standing over one area looking down and platforming without the camera moving because you are the camera of God just looking at it, you know, was a very unique feeling.

But yeah, cool to see this kind of come and be a like, yeah, you're surfing on a PlayStation controller and pulling people into the hot tub and then opening up a PS5 and building heat sinks and all this shit, you know.

And yeah, it's

it is

a wild one, but yeah, clearly just a simple,

fun thing.

And does not look like it would cost full price, but that it does.

That is a full-priced experience.

You might think it would come included with PS Plus or something as a big old mascot simple platformer, but regardless, it was fun.

It's fun.

It's good.

Beyond Astrobot

took a quick look at a game called Pokemon Close Combat.

What's Pokemon Close Combat?

I've never heard of that.

Is that an officially licensed Pokemon game?

You shut the fuck up.

I see.

I think, actually, I think as long as you don't yell, I'm making too much money out,

then we'll get to that in a second.

Nintendo might be content to leave you outside of its radar.

In a second.

Yeah, but Pokemon Close Combat is an indie fighting game made on 2D Fighter Maker.

So it's got that same little EnterBrain logo startup when you and the janky menus of if you if you've played like fucking Dong Dong Never Die or Arm Joe.

Oh yeah, this looks like trash.

The Mizagab fighting game, you've got that janky kind of frame for it.

The game inside on that engine though is pretty good.

It's pretty fun.

It's a fun little indie fighter.

Not trash, but they're using

it looks like trash.

I'm not saying it is trash.

The hand-drawn art style is very charming

of every Pokemon.

It's like basically getting a bunch of Pokemon fighting types, you know, into

and

they all have a bit of a hand-drawn,

you know, kind of, I want to say it's not quite Kirby 3,

but it's a bit like

not snipper clippers.

What's the game I'm thinking of?

Maybe like scribble knots a little bit with the way it's kind of, you know, it's like a very just light, loose pencil kind of art style, but it's very fun.

It looks like a 14-year-old Pokemon fan's fantasy of the game they wish they could make, but then they make like a pile of shit that sucks.

But this one actually looks competently made and with like the animation that it would need.

Yeah, it's definitely like,

it's better than the engine it's running on, that's for sure.

Because,

you know, when we started get, we were trying to get it running, like the first, like, perhaps 30 minutes or 45 were spent just solving the can it run?

Can it, can I get the controllers running

properly?

You know, watching the footage, and it sounds terrible, but like in a good way.

Oh, because Pokemon sound awful.

So there's a game volume that is like, say it's at 50, and then the screeching Game Boy noises of the Pokemon going, yeah,

are at like 90, you know.

Oh, man, it is,

horrible to listen to, which is great because Pokemon battles sound like garbage.

And, you know, literally, the first level that loads in is the onslaught Marvel vs.

Capcom 1 city stage, you know.

So, yeah.

Oh, there it is.

Oh, I just clicked to a part of the footage.

There it is.

Yeah, wow, that really is the onslaught six.

But, like, but when it comes down to it, it's like there's a bunch of characters in that.

There's like a solid cast of maybe 20, it feels like or so.

And there's a lot, yeah, there's some fun stuff going on with just like you know, getting the characters accurate with their references and you know, having

special moves in there.

There's a system that kind of revolves around like everyone has some normals, but like most specials kind of require a bar.

And to build a bar, you got to either land a sweep or a throw and kind of get this aggressive, you know, kind of mixed game going.

And, but one of the things that like fully, I remember seeing some

match footage of it a while back.

So I know this has been in the works for a while.

What really got my attention was a

video of, so obviously you're like, it's a fighting game, it's Pokemon, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, Hitmontop, right?

They gotta be there.

The usual.

But what they did here is they actually have Tyrogue, which is the pre-volution.

The little scrappy fighter Pokemon is who you pick.

pick.

And depending on the number of punches or kicks you land in round one, it evolves into one of the three for round two.

That's so stupid, but also really awesome.

It's great.

It's really good.

And you see a little counter underneath your life bar of like how many punches or kicks you've land.

If you land more one than the other, you get the respective evolution.

And if you land an even number of both, then you get hit on top.

So fucking awesome.

and of course that's ridiculous and when it evolves into that for round two and three you get the the full move list for those characters you know it's full it's a full on different character um

when you're in that first round if you build up three meters and you have the right number you can just do your level three to evolve right away you know so you can force it out faster even um but that's a you know what Budokai Tenkaichi was right

okay well finish your thought because leveling up up from base Goku all the way up to the fucking top is fucking peak as shit, and it rules.

And you know what?

Yeah, Blue Goku is insanely broken, but you let me get there, so shut up.

One slot.

One slot, cowards.

Put it all in one.

Find a way to make it work.

Make it fun.

Make it so that you can do all of that with the one character.

Don't fucking do this shit, man.

It's so, it's, that's, it's a, such a great way to do it.

like i love that and if there's different tactical advantages or different balancing advantages to going one way or the other kaioken versus two versus ga then sure but like i love that this type of a bit is how you implement those characters off of tyrogue that's such a fun thing to do that's it's different you know if you picked an ev

and then you got to do something similar with that this whole game is an evolution thing it's such a fun idea man i love that and and quite frankly, like, I wish that wasn't the only character that had that mechanic, you know?

Oh, it is.

Well, I mean, that's probably a lot of work.

It is, it is, but it's so cool.

And it was, that got my interest, right?

And the, the real, I mean, everybody's like, oh, shit, that's really smart.

I'm like, yeah, isn't that exciting?

Like, that's a fun thing to bring to this kind of game that makes it very Pokemon feeling, you know?

And, and, um,

I just, I wish I want more creative gameplay design like that, you know?

I think Dragon Ball is a perfect place for that, even though you've got a billion characters to drop in there, you know, this is a game about powering up characters and having them go through their forms.

Like,

if you're gonna make a split, do it for a really good reason.

Like the fusions, I, of course, yeah, that makes sense, you know, but man, how fun to just like find a way to take your character through all these power levels as you go, you know?

Um, I mean, shit, like, even if it was, I don't know, like, I know that any possible implementation of the idea could be something that would people, some people would be like, ah, fuck that, I hate that.

But, like, even if it was a game where it's like, you have seven bars of super, and each time you gain a bar, he just, he powers up to the next level, you know?

Even if it's something, something, something, something like that, and there's a little something that you get out of that.

Like, that's a, that's, that's a very passive way to do it, but it can be, it can be as simple as that.

But I just, I really loved how it was implemented in this case.

Um, and in the end, I was like, you know what, man?

Like, yeah, I would love to play this character and like figure out a way to, you know, figure, like, basically main four in one, you know?

Um, obviously, Digimon comes to mind as well for this type of thing.

And, like, yeah, Digimon is all about going up and down that evolution chart, you know.

I, uh, I love that.

I think that that's really fun if you find a way for a single character to just go through their versions.

Um, and then there, yeah, there's some other fun, fun stuff in there too.

And by the end, you know, it got real and we were feeling out the matchups and stuff.

So shout outs to Pokemon Close Combat, you know.

And what was especially fun is a bit that I remember hearing about and then like, yeah, what to confirm it.

There is, if you beat arcade mode without losing a round,

you get a secret final boss.

And that final boss is Gorochu.

And Gorochu is a evolution.

It was supposed to be, I want to say the Raichu evolution.

So the third Pikachu.

Oh, man.

I've never seen this.

Never happened, but it was supposed to be the final Pikachu evolution.

Oh, that looks like shit.

Okay, so big electric fucking rejected boss.

You fight it.

It's super cheap.

It's super fucking dirty.

You beat it, and the ball appears and it goes back to its master, the baz.

And fucking Zubaz appears and takes him back into his Pokeball.

Right?

How fucking awesome is that?

The dream is complete.

You got jump scared by your own character.

So that was something

I caught wind of before, but what a perfect way.

Like a rejected Pokemon electric

boss target.

That's really great.

Who else would be the trainer?

And Zubaz with the cloak and cape on just kind of like returns him to the ball.

And you got to earn it.

You got to really earn it.

Storm is always there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The rejected duo.

It's great.

That is fantastic.

That was a real fun little bit to throw it there as well.

So, yeah, shout outs.

Pokemon Close Combat.

Which, yeah, I mean, they run tournaments.

It's updated constantly, and they got stuff going on.

You can find out more.

I know the Mizumi wiki, which has lots of details on a bunch of other fighting games as well, has a full breakdown on FAQs on what you need to know.

Might have to do a little work on the setup part of it because that's just anytime you're running 2D Fighter Maker, there's always a bunch of hurdles and hoops to run through, unfortunately.

But it's got NetPlay as well.

They've figured that out with it too.

So, yeah, go check out Pokemon Close Combat.

Had a lot of fun with that.

And

a second bullet point: be more courageous with your character evolution

combat systems in your games.

I will.

I definitely will, I promise.

Yeah, so that's pretty much that.

We are going to be

a bit busy this week, but I'm definitely going to pop the schedule up.

We'll get in some Phoenix Wright and we'll get in some

Elden Ring.

So stay tuned to my Twitter for more details on that.

All right.

Quick break?

Yeah, let's take a quick break.

I got OB.

All right, BRB.

Peace.

Alrighty, what's going on?

Okay, well, I didn't do a lot of streaming this week because I had been doing weeks of two streams a day because

doing streams is better than sitting around moping uh and then i'm pretty sure i fell asleep with my eyes open playing the plucky squire

um my lazy eye just started to fucking drift and i just kind of like uh and i'm like all right that's enough is that an anti-endorsement or just no that has nothing to do with plucky squire that's it's very charming okay

um actually i the plucky squire seems really great um it just seems like the kind of game i would rather play with my boy in like two years ah um because it is super charming and

really simple and like

like easy what a great name for this art style this this that describes exactly what it sounds like when you absolutely

uh but yeah i was like oh and i kind of zoomed out and i realized that I almost fell asleep playing Inotria a couple days earlier, the Italian Souls game we talked about.

Yeah.

And so I was like, all right, no, no more streams for Pat this week.

So Pat didn't do any streams.

I played more Knitsugami,

which is incredible.

It's really fucking great.

Got even better than last time.

Oh, yeah.

I got to,

I got to the, so about maybe maybe a quarter through the game, they're like, okay, we feel like you have a handle on these mechanics.

It is now time to start adding new weird things like multiple paths through a stage, or, hey, did you know there were actually hidden chests in all the levels you've completed that had upgrade materials, but you didn't have the character that you needed to do them?

Go redo those fucking levels and go get more upgrade mats.

Uh, bosses that are much harder, uh, weirder little guys to put down, like a healer or like a sumo wrestler that draws aggro,

multiple gates that the enemies come through.

Like

prior to like the fifth level, enemies always come through through one gate.

So it's been really easy to just stack up your gang right in front of it and just beat them all when they come in.

And they're like, well, no, now they're going to come through two.

And later I assume they're going to come through three.

So you're going to have to start placing your boys all over the place.

It's really great.

Okay.

Are there boss fights?

Yes.

Every single level has an accompanying boss fight.

Okay.

And the boss fights are all completely unique enemies, and most of them have unique gimmicks.

Does that still feel like a tower defense at that point, or is that just a 1v1 with your crew

in place?

So, yeah, it does because you always have your shrine maiden on the field that you have to protect.

Always.

Okay.

No matter what the level.

So a boss fight will have a really gigantic guy come up and you have to divert it away.

Or there's one where you have to light all the lanterns in a stage with your boys to get the boss to

show its weak point while mobs are still trying to attack your maiden.

Stuff like that.

Yeah, it's excellent.

It's fantastic.

And so every single mission, I don't know if I talked about this last time, every single mission has like three

bonus criteria.

So stuff like

there's a cave mission where

your boys can only attack people they can see that are lit up by lanterns.

Right?

So you have to have all the lanterns lit so that they can hit enemies that go near them.

And there's bonus conditions that'll give you upgrade materials or like new equipment.

That is

beat the level with every lantern lit.

And then the one underneath it is beat the level with no lanterns lit.

Ah, okay, okay.

And or beat it, beat the level without

using X amount of currency, or make sure that there's five different roles on the stage at any given time.

And the rewards are for buying what?

So we'll take the archer, right?

So the archer has six upgrades.

They all do, right?

Archer has upgrade one, increases their health a little bit.

Upgrade two is increases their defense, their attack a little bit.

Upgrade three is their arrows are now on fire, and so they stagger enemies.

Upgrade four is increases their health by a lot.

Upgrade five is increase their attack by a lot.

And upgrade six is they shoot two arrows at once now.

Okay,

and that's where your primary upgrade stuff goes into.

It's like you're going like I like woodcutters and thieves and archers, so I'm going to buff the fuck out of them so they are much, much, much stronger units.

And I've been getting like bonus equipment for the character.

My favorite one is one that makes all of your boys stronger, but makes your main character weaker by the same amount.

Interesting.

Okay.

And I assume I'll get a similar one that is the opposite.

Inverted.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's fucking great.

It's fucking awesome.

I'm mad at it for being super good.

Like, I got stuck on a boss for like an hour and a half because I couldn't figure out his fucking, like, the timing on his lantern mechanic.

And instead of just giving up and going back to Space Marine, I actually stuck through it and kept going, even though it's just this goofy little tower defense game.

And also, it has New Game Plus where you do the whole game over and it is a step up in difficulty, but you have every single item and unit from the beginning.

Okay.

Yeah, I wonder anytime a new IP comes out and it's like, oh, that's pretty solid, it's like, is that enough these days?

Like, it, you know, to like, it's, to get

exit velocity, you know, exoprimal, certainly, yeah.

It did not,

you know, but it was something like this when I'm hearing, it's like, oh, shit, it's pretty fun.

It's like, okay, like,

what, what is it, like, what is it?

Uh,

how's it performing?

You know, where's it at?

What, what are people

so?

I'm in the cap on Discord, and they put out like an announcement saying, Kanutsugami sold 500k copies.

Yay!

So, like, it's doing fine.

Nice, okay, cool.

Um,

it's it's excellent.

I, I, I, it's also, like, aggressively a PlayStation 2 game in that the models look like

the graphics look like

up-res Monster Hunter PS2 games.

That may not hit quite as hard for you, but a lot of people in here are definitely gonna like know that exact aesthetic.

I think that's totally fine, especially given that there's a strong art direction that is again classic Yu-Ki-O, Japanese woodblock stuff and brushstrokes, you know, like that'll carry you.

Uh, yeah, this game game's excellent.

I had to, no, no notes.

Um,

Even when the game was like, here they unlock the thief class on mission five, and they're like, jokes on you.

There were hidden upgrade chests in the floor that only the thief can get in missions one, two, three, and four.

Go back and do them again.

I was like, well.

I'll get cool upgrade stuff and also

I'm rebuilding one of the town levels and those are tracked by like stage completions as their time metric.

So yeah, I'll go back and do those four levels again, and then I'll have stronger characters, and my little town will be built up.

Hooray!

All right, let me see this

Okami crossover thing that you said.

It looks bad.

Let me see it.

Like, it looks bad.

It's hilarious how bad it looks.

It's an Okami skin.

Yeah, it's an Okami skin, an Okami weapon, some Okami effects.

You can have the flowers running around kind of thing.

Oh, it's not actually Ami.

It's an Ami-inspired outfit.

Yeah, it's an Ami-inspired fursuit.

Oh,

okay.

That's fine.

That's fine.

It's almost like, what if you Monster Hunter killed Amaterazu and then skinned it to make this outfit?

That's terrible.

Well, that's the vibe it gives.

It looks like Monster Hunter armor for Amatorazu.

Yeah.

That's fine.

no good game excellent excellent good game very good

the helmet should have been much more clearly wolf head though like blithe style

yeah

um

what else so while i was playing my tower defense game

um

so i don't know if i mentioned it last week But

my timeline's getting all messed up.

But I've been playing a lot of Space Marine 2.

Man, Man, that game's incredible.

That game's incredible.

Like,

either the campaign or the co-op stuff or

the PvP,

it's fucking amazing.

It's fucking great.

But in my streaming of Space Marine 2, I was asked, hey, Pat, has your wife Paige, aka Peach Saliva, seen a Necron once.

And I said, I don't think Paige has seen a Necron.

Let me check.

So I asked Paige, Paige, have you ever seen a Necron?

To which she said, no.

What's a Necron?

Wooly, have you seen a Necron?

I'm about to.

Look up Necron

N-E-C-R-O-N on the Google images.

Yeah.

All right.

Here's a Necron hierarchy.

That's the picture I'm looking at.

Would you describe those as robotic space skeletons?

They're lichy space skeletons.

Yes.

Yes, they are.

So Paige streamed herself watching Bricky from the Death of Ridiculous

war videos for hours and hours and hours over the past week.

That took me way too long.

Okay, yes.

Yes.

The space skeletons.

The house is now fully 40k pilled.

Oh, my God.

And some of the...

We have a copy of the infinite and divine audio and textbook about two Necron guys in the house.

Oh my God.

We spent hours the other day fucking around with Warhammer 40k rogue trader and her going, oh man, this is a cool character I made.

And going through the lists of other 40k games.

This house is 40k pilled now i noticed that it's not just base skeletons but you've got fancy dressed ones like the lichgard is a skeleton with a little hat or this right the feron is a skeleton with a big gold cape

um

then there's the nemesaur which is like a centaur

man

um

so uh shout out to bricky

uh runs a great youtube channel talks about 40k i'd highly recommend if you want to learn about 40k, go check out Bricky's videos.

Trying to get in touch with him to do something over the next couple of weeks.

Also, was talking about Space Marine, and as a result, Mandalore is going to be on the show this week.

We're going to play Space Marine 2 multiplayer because everybody loves fucking Space Marine.

It's so good.

It's so goddamn good.

All right.

Is that the horde mode?

No, it's the co-op.

It's the Left 4 Dead, but with a leveling system.

Nice.

But yeah, no, it's a 40K household now.

And like, Paige has her DD friends, and one of them I know paints minis.

So, like, there's a real, real threat.

of the home being invaded by tiny little plastic necron dudes in the very real near future.

Has Paige played Grim Fandango?

No.

Does she know what it is?

Yes.

Okay.

The last I spoke to her, she looked at Manny's design and was like,

hmm, it's kind of a shrug.

Not hot enough.

Yeah, just not the type of skeleton she seems to be.

A little too goofy.

Not hot enough.

Okay.

All right.

More dead, more decrepit, please.

Gotcha.

Proportions matter.

But yeah, no.

Also, this week I'm going to be streaming 40K Dark Tide.

That's a sponsored show.

There's a lot of noise being made about Warhammer now.

Warhammer's good.

Of the coast, are we?

What?

Or no, not of the coast.

That's

what's the Games Factory?

Games Workshop.

Games Workshop.

There you go.

Yes.

The other one.

But yeah, no, like there's like a moment where we're like lying in bed going to sleep and we were talking about like Sanguineus and the Blood Angels.

And then I'm like, oh,

we're so cooked.

This house is so 40k cooked now.

With the sponsorship going down as well.

All right.

Yeah.

Well, eventually, eventually, you're going to have to start painting your minis, bro.

I don't have to paint no mini.

You say that, but I am saying that.

No, you know what I'm saying?

Is what I'm going to say is that the Total War series made a Total War Warhammer game.

They need to hurry their fucking ass up and make that 40k game.

So, one of the weirdest things I found when I was researching all this,

Warhammer is the only property I can think of in which the space sci-fi setting is more popular than the fantasy setting.

Like, fantasy is nearly invariably the de facto more popular setting in damn near everything.

Except for this.

Uh,

hmm.

Well, yeah, it feels that way because I hear about 40k way more than I hear about other things, but it's also because it's basically like wild space fantasy and not just

fully.

Yeah, no, it's still, it's still fantasy.

It's just they're wearing robots.

Yeah, like they have guns.

Like, you don't, like, being into

being into

40k does not mean you will be into Mass Effect.

No.

But it does mean you might likely be into Lord of the Rings.

It does mean that if you start reading a bunch of this stuff, then your TikTok algorithm thinks you want to see old bearded dudes argue about whether or not Starfleet could take on the Imperium.

And I'm like, this is garbage, I say, as I watch the whole video.

Yeah.

No,

I think it's like, yeah, the fantasy element of War of 40k is much more prevalent than the sci-fi element.

And also, besides

the Blizzard,

like aping it,

how many other settings are there where there's a full-on parallel worlds of space and past fantasy?

I don't know, man.

Right?

Because Warcraft, StarCraft are the direct analogs, and then

what other settings do that?

I can't think of much.

Like, I was on Adeptus Ridiculous, and we were hanging out with Brick E, DK, and Shai.

Check that out this week, by the way.

The topic was like, what makes Warhammer so good?

And one of the things that we talked about is that, like,

let's say you saw a skeleton that looked like a robot, and you went, that's cool as fuck.

Like, the path of what do you want to get into slash, what are you into

is do you like miniatures?

Do you like board games?

Do you like painting?

Do you like fit books?

Do you like video games?

What kind of video games do you like?

How would you like to express your interest in this cool-looking thing that you saw?

Like there is a

weirdly enormous amount of spread on it.

Which is smart for, yeah, that's how you use your IP and market properly.

Like, Henry Cavill needs to hurry his ass up and get that TV show out there because that will be the easiest way for anyone to point at, be like, hey, do you think my little toy Space Marine looks cool?

You know, there's a TV show, it's got Superman in it.

You should go check that out.

And being into the miniatures and books doesn't mean you're into the games, you know?

Like, you can, these are all very separate things, I imagine.

On the previous point, I was just thinking that I remember in like elementary school and such when I remember when friends of mine and stuff were like into Warcraft.

Warcraft 2 specifically was what was blowing up.

Yeah, Warcraft 1 was like, it was good, but the heat came at Tides of Darkness.

Warcraft 2 was what my friends all talked about.

And then when StarCraft dropped, that eclipsed Warcraft.

And StarCraft, I would say, was way more popular with everybody I knew.

And StarCraft was like my high school, just every single person I knew played StarCraft.

Yeah, to the point where like Warcraft was like, oh, yeah, that's the throwback thing, but now it's all about StarCraft was the vibe for most of high school.

And that didn't start turning again until they made the MMO.

Warcraft 3 even

came, but like...

Man, Warcraft 3 is awesome.

It sucks.

You can't play it anymore.

But it still felt like StarCraft was the thing that everyone I knew cared about.

So I'm going to, so I feel like the fantasy setting being more popular is because they made the MMO first and pushed it hard and never made World of StarCraft.

So, like, do you remember like 2006

when people were like, oh, so when's World of StarCraft, man?

Yeah.

When are they going to do that?

They got to do that.

Oh, my God.

It's that, it's, that's, that, and when is Etsy going, or when is Assassin's Creed going to Japan?

Oh my God, it actually was that far back.

That's it.

It was those two things.

Like World of StarCraft and Assassin's Creed Japan.

We got to get them.

Yeah.

Holy shit.

It's crazy.

It never happened.

But the thought was like, oh, but it's obvious.

That's what comes next.

Everyone's waiting on it, you know?

But no.

And so wow, just existing and being the main MMO, no matter what the setting was, it had enough time to just be

the fucking basin that everyone collected into.

That fantasy world now, now Warcraft has a way bigger

following because it's collected people for an active longer period of time.

I remember when I saw a headline that was like Warhammer MMO incoming, and I went, and it said it was Age of Reckoning, which meant it was the fantasy one, and I could have flipped my fucking desk.

I like, like, just

like, oh my god.

And I mean, yeah, I guess like that, that was the thought was that Project Titan was, was that going to be

the big StarCraft thing?

That's what it was going to be.

Because there were rumors about World of Warcraft II and Project Titan, and Titan is the name of a fancy moon in our solar system.

So I thought that meant it was going to be World of StarCraft.

But StarCraft Ghost struggled for years, right?

I would have marked out so hard.

So the interesting part is like, like even

like there's an idea that like oh wow and world of starcraft uh together there's a little bit of like oh would you be eating your own lunch you know would you be taking no from your your plate with that um and mmos are like now these massive container games that the if i think blizzard ideally if they wanted to do something like that, if Overwatch as a different genre entirely, but still blowing up the StarCraft brand was a thing, they would have been, I'm pretty sure, very happy with that as, like, oh, here's another way we can push the same IP, but then, you know, expand it outward from where its original RTS bones came from.

And then, yeah, of course, Overwatch turned into something else entirely.

But World of StarCraft or anything like that never came.

When we did get StarCraft II, I remember very quickly kind of hearing people go, eh.

There were a lot of problems with StarCraft II.

The biggest problem right away was like, I don't like to play as the Terrans.

I want to play as the fucking Protoss, please.

And it was very odd as an outsider because I was like, this did not take the world by storm the way it was supposed to.

No.

You know, a StarCraft release should be a nuclear event in the game industry.

Yeah.

And it wasn't.

But the MOBAs were already here.

They were already here, hidden within one of of their own games.

Yeah, I think

the old, I think the 40k situation, it would have happened with StarCraft if they made another big StarCraft thing that people cared about.

You know, it's funny that you mentioned StarCraft ghosts because Space Marine 1 and 2 are StarCraft ghosts.

Like, that's the exact, that's the literal concept.

If you're one Space Marine, you get to see what it's like to stand next to an orc, and a big orc, and a tank, and a dreadnought, and a lord of change.

And, you know, and all we would get hype about back when the game, when StarCraft Ghost was announced like four times, was like, oh, how cool is it going to be to be on the ground and point the laser and call for the nuke while you're seeing it from eye level?

You know, there was a fucking screenshot of StarCraft Ghost

completely stole the sold the game to me because what it was is a ghost what is Nova

was walking down a trench and the trench was on either side of a walking path was siege engine siege tanks as far as the eye could see

like firing off in both directions at at Zerg and I was like oh it's so fucking cool god damn it I mean make no mistake, like,

it's still inside of me

the thing to...

I want to see the scene of walking on a...

going through a battlefield where a battle cruiser the size of the skybox is flying overhead and a a protoss uh um

uh what the fuck is the giant carrier um carrier the carrier yeah like uh like shooting its drones out having a crazy thing happen above you while you're on foot that is still a fucking incredible moment moment.

Yeah,

that's Space Marine 1 and 2.

There you go.

There you go.

Yeah, okay.

So, you know, and then like, you, like, after taking out a bunch of Zerglings or whatever, it's like, oh, fuck, it's a dragoon.

It is a singular, like, oh, no, what are we going to do?

I'm fucking dead.

Oh, God.

Run, run, run.

You know, never mind the fucking ultralisk ruining the landscape.

Like, all of that was what your fucking over-excited teenage brain wanted to see.

I don't know if I talked about it when I was talking about Space Marine 2, but there is a boss fight in that game that is an enemy that your squad would never be able to defeat ever.

It is the equivalent of an ultralisk, like specifically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

what they do is that you drop a building on it and grievously injure it.

Okay.

So that the missing limbs,

like concrete rebar pillar straight through its chest version, is still a ridiculous boss fight for your characters, but is technically feasible.

Okay, okay.

I see what you're describing, what you want is Space Marine 2.

And

yeah, that's definitely what it sounds like.

In front of what I've seen the screenshots and things and the videos, it seems like it's pretty fucking dope.

Although, what I'm also describing, just to clarify, is what child me wanted seeing the things of the units I know, you know.

So, in this world, it would just be like, oh, big cool shit that I don't know.

You know, but at the time, it was like I specifically with the familiarity of the world, seeing it from a different perspective, carried that novelty.

But I suppose,

like, well, then time to get into Warhammer is how you're going to be able to do that.

I would say that

it's like a really one-to-one

where it's like,

Warhammer is StarCraft without any restraint whatsoever

right like just like

we were listening to metal when we when we made these designs

right right what if the robot was actually a coffin for dead soldiers and they're in horrible pain ah album cover shit yeah yeah um

it's it's well what i call uh warhammer 40k is too much is never enough

what if someone what what if someone invested what if if someone took an album cover of like a metal band but then said let's turn this into a full ip and put millions and millions and millions of dollars into it

uh yeah i i i like warhammer i'm probably i i have been told by the subreddit moderators not to say this

i am probably going to start reading warhammer books this week

you're

gonna you're gonna paint a fucking figure, dude.

I don't care what you want to paint a figure.

You're going to paint a fucking figure before we're done here.

So, hey, let me tell you:

I genuinely mean this.

If there was ever a game announcement I would ever be more upset by, if Creative Assembly comes out and says, here comes the fourth Warhammer game and it's Age of Sigmar, which is the other Warhammer fantasy setting, instead of 40k, I'm going to trash this room.

I'm going to throw a adult-sized tantrum.

Oh, you care.

I mean,

oh, man.

Here's what will happen.

You're going to get, you're going to get your, you might not paint it, but you're going to get your first figure when it has a little amiibo type thing that you put to the next.

Oh, no, I hate that shit.

I don't know if you remember, but I hate amiibos.

Yeah.

I can't stand them.

But when the game is red and it's a part of it, then you're going to get in there and we'll see what happens.

Okay, listen.

People in the chat are saying that Age of Sigmar is cool.

That is true.

Age of Ligma is cool,

but I want the fucking robots

and guns.

I want the spaceships.

What do you want from me?

Also, I just really like to say say Age of Ligmar.

I think it's funny.

I'm like a child giggling.

Wait, okay, wait, which is funny?

Age of Ligma or Age of Sugmar?

Yeah, okay, it's Sugmar.

Yeah, all right.

Yeah,

you're gonna discover that you don't have to go down to the games workshop to get your fix.

You can have it.

I think you should never go down to the games workshop.

I think that is a real piece of advice that I'm giving you right now.

And you're gonna discover that you can just have it delivered straight to you, pre-painted almost even, and then you'll be able to do it.

No, okay, come on.

Listen, I'm not a fucking Neanderthal, okay?

Like,

I'm not a painting or artistic guy, but the idea of getting pre-painted miniatures, why don't I just fucking

have...

I was about to say have a machine breathe for me, and then I use a C-PAP machine because I'm stupid.

So that's a bad example.

Well, that's a terrible example, yeah.

But Paige is going to be painting her Necron,

and then the mood in the house will change, it will, and suddenly you'll be like, Oh, well, if she's putting her thing up there, then I feel like I should have one to put up to.

Okay, this is kind of incredible timing for this Warhammer discussion.

Um, I'm being informed that at 6 p.m.

Pacific tonight, Peach Saliva will be streaming Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader.

Uh-huh.

That's uh 6 p.m.

Pacific on Monday, the 23rd of September.

I'm calling it Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader.

Market.

It's going down.

That's today.

I like Warhammer a lot now.

There's more.

There should be more.

Yeah.

I say about maybe the most overdone setting ever.

You see, the moment you describe, oh, I might consider opening the book, it's like, oh, you might read a book.

You've switched mediums.

It's over.

It's done.

Well, I mean, I watched Astartes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Astarties is hot.

That's pretty much it.

Big week.

I took the week off, so now this week can be big.

I'm going to cover the PlayStation State of Play tomorrow and Terry Bogart.

It's Terry Bogart tomorrow.

Terry Day.

And yeah, State of Play, which, whatever, fuck that.

Terry.

I have to watch it to complain.

It's the law.

Hold on.

It is also Mortal Kombat 1 DLC Day.

Audio listeners can't tell that my face has no expression at all.

Almost as if I didn't hear Woolly even speak the words.

Story expansion, multiple characters, and the full

next round, next season of content versus one pizza delivery boy.

Oh, shit.

It's incredible.

Yeah.

Okay.

Covering State of Play, Terry Bogard.

Wednesday, I'm streaming something at 2 p.m., but I can't tell you what it is yet.

But it's cool.

So go to it at the time that I told you to go, which is 2 p.m.

Pacific on Wednesday over twitch.tv slash badstares at.

It's cool.

Trust me.

Then I got a 40k Dark Tide sponsored stream and probably some more Terry.

Then on Friday, I'll be playing Space Marine 2 with Mandalore over at Mandalore Gaming.

And then on Saturday, I'm going to try out Frost Punk 2 and Age of Mythology Retold because

I feel like I want to play an RTS game.

And also,

they sent me some copies, so I'll play them.

Why not?

That's it for Pat.

You can also check out Pizza Liva tonight, Monday.

The Rogue Trader.

That's 6 p.m.

Pacific.

It's happening.

It is.

Oh, someone in the chat asks, why not play the Dawn of War 2 update?

Because that fucking game is so busted.

They released an anniversary edition of Dawn of War 2 to

be like, hey, Warhammer.

And it doesn't work on multi-core CPUs.

What?

Yeah.

It just won't load.

Won't turn on.

And the interface is like, doesn't scale for 4K, so you have to mod it extensively.

Man, it's so weird to hear all this shit about Dawn of War problems and stuff.

Because, again,

I spent so many years working next to a competitive top player of that game that that was super in and was go and like talked all about how great it was.

It is great, it's a shame it doesn't turn on,

it is a shame it does not turn on.

Uh, okay,

so with that, what's going on?

Well,

we hinted at it earlier, but

uh

Nintendo

bided its time,

as you do in Pokemon, and then eventually unleashed its attack, waiting quite a bit of time

to

throw its lawsuit out at Pocket Pear.

And it is a patent lawsuit, notably.

And

they've decided to sue them for patent infringement specifically.

This is a weird lawsuit.

Very odd, but here we are.

And the one is inclined to go, now, huh?

What about every other Pokemon-like game that has been coming out ever since the Game Boy Advance?

What about your cassette beasts

of yesteryear?

And your...

What was the other one?

Tem2 something?

Temu.

Temu?

Temu.

Wait, no, wait, no, no.

That's the fucking Amazon ripoff.

Teebo?

It was not Temu.

Temtem.

Tem, Tem Tem.

Right?

And what about your countless others?

There's tons of things over the years.

And I'm like, is it because Pocket Pear was so callous with its energy about it?

Or is it the part where they went, we're making too much money.

We don't know what to do with it.

I don't know what to do with this shit.

There's a lot of people speculating on how and why and what.

I mean, like, some people were saying, like, oh, it's because the Switch 2 details leaked, which is like, I don't, what does that have to do with that?

I don't see that.

But

a couple of people legally have taken a look, and they're thinking that

in particular, while we don't have a ton of details, and while Pocket Bear has basically gone, like, yeah, we don't know where the fuck this came from,

they are thinking that this is going to be

specifically about the like catching mechanics and like how you

kind of throw a Pokeball out

is a speculated possibility.

The fact that they are again specifically just targeting like this one and not any of the many others, nor have they over the years targeted like you know, once a kartgate racing game comes out or a platform fighter comes out, like it's just this one.

Very, very odd.

And another detail that might

give some insight here is there was a leak list of games that are going to be announced at

the Tokyo Game Show 2024 release from CESA.

And the thought is that perhaps PAL World coming to consoles that are competitors is a reason why

they're trying to.

Hey, wait a second.

You could do all that Pokemon rip-off shit on the godless personal computer,

but uh, if it's on Xbox or on PlayStation, well, now it's a much more direct issue, um, but again, Temp Pokemon PAL World is not the first Pokemon-like

real, real odd one,

and it's already on Xbox, yeah, there you go, yeah.

So, um,

anyway, uh,

so there's Pocket Pair Pair might, so yeah,

one of the

lawyer talking about this is saying that Pocket Pair might have to make gameplay changes to PAL World to circumvent this.

We don't know if they're looking to have it

modified slash removed from storefronts altogether.

But

they are saying that the lawsuit appears to be in Nintendo's favor, likely.

Oh, Nintendo wouldn't sue at all if they didn't think they were going to win.

So, is the thought process then that it's like they could have pulled the trigger on any of these games at any point, but like this is the one, you know?

What if they were like, we want to make sure they make a lot of money so that we can say that that money is actually our money?

Well, they, that's like the fact that there's a news story going, we don't know what to do with all this money, is the crazy part.

Like, that's that's the like the straight-up fucking shot and chaser here.

Like, what do we do?

And Nintendo's like, I got a few ideas, you know?

And so.

What if that was our money?

Is it our money?

No, but what if it was, though?

And so it's going to have to come down to, I suppose, like, exactly what the terms are.

You know, is it the act of throwing out a fucking Pokeball and catching a pal?

You know?

Do they just mod, what do they, what if they modify that to a Ghostbuster fucking vacuum suck?

You know, like, what is the specific thing?

Is it the mechanics of having your buddy monsters and fighting with them?

Well,

the only guess that I thought was like kind of legit is that it was like the Pokeball animation.

It really does.

Yeah, it certainly does.

But then, is it like, is as simple as like, okay, so yeah, replace it with a laser gun that you shoot and call your buddy back, you know?

And again, it's not copyright infringement.

It's patent infringement.

Yeah, which is way more interesting.

And patents are specific, specific things.

A copyright can be the overall, it can be the trademark, the name,

there's a lot of elements to that you can come at it from.

But a patent will be like

we'll file a diagram for this exact ball hitting a monster, absorbing it, shaking on the ground, you know, and then it clatching inside.

And that is specifically what we own.

So,

very, very odd.

Yeah.

And, you know, does this mean, like, are any other Pokemon clones that exist going to start sweating about this?

Because I want to say that for a long time, you know, Nintendo has basically like

innovated a new idea, invented a new thing, and then kind of create a genre and then leave it alone.

You know, that's what mascot kart racing, platform fighters, and party games kind of were.

I remember years ago, there was an article that was basically describing: like, here is the thing Nintendo started with.

They made a big thing,

and then people were fans of that.

They wanted it to be pushed further.

And Nintendo eventually moves on and ignores the thing until people start making their own version of it.

And it becomes a whole genre.

It's happened many times over the years.

But we're talking about fucking Pokemans, dude.

Yep.

We're like.

And not the Pokemon Company, but Nintendo here.

You know, so like, obviously, the patent is going to be really specific.

It's going to be like, we don't like the way that this character comes out of a loading screen or some bullshit that no one gives a fuck about.

But, like, the reason they're going after them is because it's a fucking Pokemon rip-off.

Like, yeah.

Like, they remember when they were like, we have no plans to whatever at this time, like, a couple months ago?

That was actually,

we are telling lawyers to dig through that game until they find something rock solid we can fuck them on.

At the same time, as I'm saying the like, uh, like, why now?

I'm wondering, it's like, yeah, why Yuzu instead of Visual Boy Advance and SNES 9X and Project 64, and you know what I mean?

Like, uh, well, Yuzu showed up in that fucking Steam truck on the Steam screenshot, which was like, that was the, that's what killed it for sure.

So, is it, is it always like, yeah, we know this is in the background, And as long as you are not hitting a

like

Patreon,

you know what I mean, like subscription thing to a fan thing, and you're small, in which case we can just scare you with the if you're making money, you're playing with fire.

Is is the is like it's not like not making money is not protection, but making money is

a bonfire.

Look at me if Temtem or cassette beasts blew the fuck up, like, way bigger,

you know, would we be having this discussion?

Or is the part where it's like...

No, because they're not like outrageous.

Yeah, yeah.

The thing is, yeah, no.

PAL WORLD is like, no, you can look at these and confuse them for living Pokemon.

You might not read the art style, the full, the design cues, the ball, all of that.

It is outrageous.

But it's doing that in order to make it hit that much harder when you you pull out the fucking AK-47.

Like, now I run into the fucking AK-47.

I love that fucking PAL World is so outrageous.

It's the whole point.

It's the whole point.

Yeah.

You know, but like, obviously, Nintendo doesn't like that.

It's Scream

suing scary movie.

Anyway,

yeah, we'll have to see.

Clearly, Pocket Pear has the cash to defend themselves.

So

we will see what happens.

But yeah, the fact that this is also, again, a patent lawsuit

is very different from the way these things kind of usually go.

Patent law has its own

rules and things.

It's like fucking, it's like maritime law or sky crimes.

We don't, we barely understand these things.

I don't understand copyright law, and I definitely don't understand patent law.

Instead, I'm just thinking about how, like, Sega owns the patent for the arrow at the top of the screen from Crazy Taxi.

And then, when they made a Crazy Taxi tribute game inside, Like a Dragon, they didn't use the arrow.

A man,

and I'm like, but what the fuck is the fucking point?

So vindictive, dude.

Or just, or Namco, who's like, we own the rights to a mini-game on your loading screen, and we're going to use it once so that you can play Space Invaders when you're playing Tekken 5.

Yeah.

And never.

mind.

A cool feature in Tekken 5.

Oh, it's to stop that feature from existing in hundreds of other games.

Oh, lit.

Oh, wait.

Oh, wait, hold on.

In Budokai 3, you can spin the stick to grow your game.

But that's not a game, though.

It's not a game.

So, no, we never used it again.

But more importantly, nobody else can have it.

Yeah.

So it's nice to know that eventually that stuff did lapse and it no longer is the case.

I think video game patents are fucking poison.

People in the chat are saying the nemesis system.

Yeah, no.

That's fucking stupid.

The nemesis system gets used for two games and then thrown away, but it's still patented.

God, man.

And it's like the nemesis system was used in a

stealth and action third-person,

you know, Lord of the Rings game, right?

And like, what if

like third-person camera movement?

And what if stealth mechanics?

And what if Assassin's Creed bits?

And what if, you know, all these bits were patented beforehand?

Then the game you are making that you're patenting the idea on couldn't fucking exist, idiot.

You know, like you're like, so many video games are historically built on the established thing of the genre that was, you know,

developed before it.

Video games are rip-offs.

And video games are a product of like.

And you're improving ideas over time to get to a point where we're like, oh yeah, lock-on makes sense when we click on this button over here.

Moving the stick on

your right side is the most comfortable way to go.

Getting down the sides should be over here and so on and so forth.

You iterate the whole genre.

You iterate the entire fucking industry and like you're going to lock down things so that other people can't fucking

build off this.

How about this one?

Decades later, Terry Bogard and Street Fighter are going to be hanging out and hugging and kissing and being good friends.

Even though if you go back to 1990, what, three?

Terry Bogard and his friends are outrageous rip-offs of Street Fighter.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely insane.

But they do get grandfathered in to some degree in that the team that designed them came from Capcom and worked on Street Fighter 1.

You know, when Final Fight was developed and they're like, wait, you said you wanted another Street Fighting game, right?

Is this what you meant?

And they're like, no.

And they're like, oh, you forgot about the game you made a couple of years back.

They went on to, they, when they worked at,

when they moved to SNK, the same team made that, you know?

And I will say that like Fatal Fury gets,

it was an outrageous, there was outrageous rebuffs going on, but nowhere near as bad as Art of Fighting, right?

And Art of Fighting was to the point where Capcom made fun of it in their own game, you know, and back and forth.

But wasn't that a better way to handle this?

Making Dan as a goofy, like, ha ha, fuck your stupid character bit.

And then they're like, oh, yeah, well, Yuri's going to do all of Dan's moves.

Shut up.

And they're throwing shade at each other over the years is one thing.

But lest we forget, that same Capcom also looked at like Superfighter and went, you're chasing our, you're tracing our sprites.

We're taking you to court.

Why?

You know, like, there's the goofy, like, oh, look at that karate man doing his hidos.

You know, hado, hado ket.

No, how?

Shoco ket.

Okay.

Whatever.

That company is just tracing our shit.

You're going to jail.

Like, there was a limit for them, even at the time of World Warrior, you know.

So, like, I don't know how other people, because some people are getting emotionally involved and, like, oh, the Nintendo, like, Nintendo half-assing a bunch of Pokemon games and then suing a really interesting Pokemon rip-off is obviously a really bad look.

But obviously, the core of it is that this lawsuit is hilarious.

I think that's the main takeaway:

no matter what happens, it's going to be bad for everyone because any legal decision in Japan that affects this is somehow going to suck.

Like, if Power World gets completely away with it, it sucks.

And if Nintendo wins, they're going to be even crazier in the future.

But also,

Power World is so fucking outrageous that them getting sued by Nintendo is going to be really funny.

Yeah, and again, the fact that they're like, oh, they seem to have a strong case here by patent law, then we'll see what the ramifications are.

So yeah, okay.

Capcom sued Data East specifically, which was Fighter's History.

I want to say,

I think they sent a cease and desist, or like Super Fighter in particular, got hit by something back in the day.

And I remember that was part of why that game was so difficult to track down for a while.

But yeah, the main lawsuit was Data East.

Just a crap.

Can't we just solve this the old-fashioned way and hire guys like Kiryu to go over and fucking shake Powell World down in the street and threaten their family?

Kidnap someone.

Can we just go back to those good old days?

Kidnap someone's sister to make sure they fucking pay their cut.

Yeah.

And the answer is we're talking about Nintendo and not Sega.

So.

um,

yeah, it's uh, it is, it is, I think the, the absolute blatantness of Pocket Pear is, is, is what crossed that line this time around.

But

I really want to point out, and I'm, I'm, I'm sure I point it out every time

it is, it is beyond the funniest thing ever that Sega of Japan has a fucking 23-part game series about how cool the Yakuza are, considering their historical behavior.

That is like the most

obvious possible progression of the way Sega acted in the 90s.

Yeah, well, they would appreciate it if you stopped talking about that, bro.

How about you stop bringing it up?

Okay.

That developer's sister is fine.

I'm sure she's living a happy life.

Everything's okay.

And Pachinko is a game of skill.

And you can't even win real prizes.

You go collect little, you collect little collectibles.

You're really cool.

It's a skill game, and it's not gambling.

It's just for collectors.

What's the problem with that?

Anyway.

Yeah, we'll see where oh hey, if you if you though there is one final thing to say about this uh if you think Powell World might get super fucked on this you should probably buy it

because it may be delisted

might be a thing in like a couple years

well um

getting delisted due to uh Nintendo's wild lawsuit is

probably better than getting delisted delisted due to toxic positivity.

What a term.

I love that toxic positivity.

What a term.

I've heard that term.

I've used that term on this show before.

I don't know.

But when I talked about toxic positivity, I was complaining about FF-14

pub

crawls where people were like, don't tell me how to play my job.

I know what I'm doing.

You don't pay my sub.

There's your toxic positivity.

So, for anybody who has not heard about toxic positivity this week, Concorde popped up.

And there's a couple steps to this story, but

the, of course, people are still trying to dissect what the fuck happened and how did it go so wrong?

And so, part of that

post-mortem led to

so Colin Moriarty

spoke on

his podcast and described that he spoke to somebody who worked on Concorde and got some verification on some details and initially reported that

internally it was like it was so much more worse than you think according to the Concorde dev because it was referred to as the future of PlayStation.

It was treated as

it had Star Wars-like potential.

A dev culture of quote-unquote toxic positivity halted any negative feedback, making it cost $400 million.

Now, I am seeing

a lot of people both here and in regards to that saying that Colin Moriarty is a hack

and make shit up.

And that may be true.

I don't actually know who Colin Moriarty is.

It's from the Last End gaming podcast.

I don't really know.

I'm just describing where the story went.

So, step one was this part of it here.

But the idea of Concorde costing that much money is so funny to me.

Let's explore this further for funsies.

So

after that,

there was a further elaboration that the initial cost was $200,

and then after

basically there was an initial $200 budget, and it was not shaping up.

It was in a rough shape

after all these years of development.

And then Sony came along when they bought out the team and then put another 200 in to get it to the finish line.

So in total, while games like Spider-Man and God of War and other major AAs or quadruple A's have had these insanely huge budgets, this one doubled down on its initial budget to get it to the finish line because of the rough shape it was in.

I'm looking at everybody argue about the veracity of the source.

I'm going to get to that part right afterwards.

Which is fun.

But the toxic positivity part was apparently corroborated by others.

Yeah.

So

let me walk through this, if you don't mind.

So

that was the initial clip.

You can go check it up from the podcast describing those bits.

And so

immediately after that, a number of reporters from Kotaku, GameIndustry.biz,

and other game journalist publications basically came out and said, were saying, yeah, that number seems inaccurate because the people that I've heard or I've spoken to

did not said they gave a number, but it was not 400 million.

That's a lot of cash.

400 million is a lot.

Yeah.

200 in original development and then 200 in outsourcing after the fact.

I, for a fact, like, just going back to QA days, I know that when a when a game is on fire, they will take that thing and throw it to third-party outsourcing to just get more eyes on it.

And sometimes they'll do it in secret.

And sometimes there'll be like ghost money where they don't want certain people on the,

you know, certain events.

Like, they don't want people to know the full scope of things, but when something's on fire.

Cut all those dudes out of the credits, man.

Right.

We hired a private

fucking firefighter to come out this fire.

So that is something that happens in the industry.

But regardless, multiple people

came out after this to say that the 400 million number is not accurate.

However,

yes, there was corroboration that the toxic positivity line in particular was backed up and that internally there was overall

a glow and a feeling that this game was going to be destined for greatness and that you couldn't really speak up against it or point out any of the problems and that people who did were kind of like shunned and or, you know, pushed aside and

not encouraged to speak up about things like the character designs being fucking whack.

This is the most believable thing ever.

Um, I think back to

um, I'm sure, yeah, you watched uh Plankett's episode one review of Star Wars episode one.

There's a bit in that

where everyone is like visibly afraid of George Lucas walking around talking, and the only thing people keep saying at each other every time something comes up is going, it's going to be great.

It's going to be great.

It's got to be great.

It's going to be great.

It's going to be great.

No, I mean, your job

is tied to

your

being a yes man here.

And so as something rolls out and they go, this is the direction we're going, someone makes that initial decision.

So everyone else is like, yeah, okay, I want to keep working here.

Let's go.

Regardless of the sound, and I see somebody go, best season ever.

Right.

Now, the thing is, that was press for

the actor talking about that to the public.

Internally, if you can't be honest and have real talks about shit, that's fucking your,

that's the worst thing ever.

Yeah, it's poison.

And you roll all the way around.

You run all the way around to me talking to Gene and go, hey, you played Concord, right?

Is it like

good?

Is this sad?

And he's like, no.

It's not good.

Like, this isn't even like a tragedy.

Like, oh, it's gone forever, and you'll never get to play that.

It's like, actually, that's fine.

That's fine that you didn't play it.

And at no point internally, was this ever like pulled back to be canceled?

It wasn't canceled before release.

It was released and then immediately killed, right?

The thought is,

whatever that number ends up being, if it's not 400 million, because that's like fucking insane by any video game standards and stuff, it's still high enough that the ramifications are very likely to be felt by Sony for a while.

Well,

those 12 live service games they were planning.

Right?

I mean, like, even I don't know if any of this affects or has any bearing on something like how the pro drops and what that skew announcement is, you know?

But I does certainly feel that the damage this does is going to last because you know that this had enough of a budget for them to go and also get a bunch of CG animations done that we're never

going to see, and an entire episode of the secret level thing that's coming as well.

So, like, the marketing cash was fronted aggressively up front, which you don't do to a thing that you're spending light money on.

You know, hey, I have a question for you, somebody who's worked on video games for realsies.

So, there's the

we got to throw money at this because it's on fire, right?

That's that's very clear.

I think everybody can understand that.

Is there also a

hey, dude, this shit sucks

with the response being, and what the fuck do you expect me to actually do about that?

It's too late, or

that's too much, or I have no ability to change that.

So, I mean, admittedly, I've been out of the industry for a while, so there's things that I'm sure are different, but for the most part, shit never changes right um there is definitely people that are like yeah

we are resigned to our fate just ship it and that attitude i've seen on major releases that are sequels to beloved franchises oh yeah that one got it right where like

the there is an energy of like yeah

you can go back a number of builds and see when this was this was originally something special but that's gone now Are you ever going to be able to talk about that?

Ever.

Just ship it.

Right.

And just ship it becomes a bit of a mantra amongst people into the point where literally we are sending each other emails with just a picture of a boat.

Just like, just like, okay, how's that bug?

Did you fix it?

How's it on the new book?

Did you do your regression?

Yeah, yeah, what's going on?

Just JPEG of boat

in the email.

You know?

And you're like,

is what it is, man.

We got a lot of shit to work work on.

I got multiple things.

My desk is busy.

We can only, yeah, what do you want me to do here, right?

We're beyond that.

What makes this, I think, unique is

the just ship it mentality

never goes hand in hand with, we're sorry for taking your money.

Here's your money back.

I thought they were going to ride this out for a while.

That's the crazy part, which is, yeah, we're sorry.

Refunds for everybody.

Undo control Z, never mind, back into the bushes we go.

You know, that doesn't go hand in hand.

So

I was under the assumption, and maybe I was right, or maybe I was wrong.

I don't know.

I need somebody to confirm to me, and I don't know who could.

Concorde's big deal was supposed to be these, these

very well-animated like shorts that would happen with the weekly story.

Right.

And two of those, or three of those came out, and I watched them, and they are technically immaculate.

Oh, they're really good.

Yeah.

They are feature film

CG quality, immaculate, between the most boring characters talking about nothing.

It is, it is like

astonishing.

So

I have been curious to see, I'm like, are these secret, is that secret level episode, or would these shorts make those characters seem like better designs in the way they're used?

You know, like, is there something about them that'll, like, convince or sell it in a way that the in-game models don't?

I don't know, because, like, the, the, the CG stuff is, like, it's A plus.

It looks great.

And it's, they're just talking about nothing.

Like, it's got no soul to it at all.

And I was under the impression

that they would have had to build like

fucking 50 of those things for launch, right?

To you know get ahead of it because it's supposed to be weekly.

But what if they didn't have like 50?

What if they had like eight?

And so if they decided to keep the game going, they would have to like have the team making those super expensive, super high quality CG cutscenes week after week after week, so that the total weekly cost of keeping the game up was actually really high.

But that's okay, because

it's going to be doing gangbusters.

And it's not free to play.

So everyone's going to be buying it, you know?

So that's where the money's directly coming from.

You're like, yeah, yeah.

Who knows, man?

Yeah, you should track down a couple of those Concord shorts because they are like.

They are.

The technical team

made them without input from like a writer, is how they feel like.

Just

it has been so.

We talked about how Rumbleverse came and had a goofy art style that people couldn't get behind, and that was a big hit.

Do you think that's what killed it?

Just straight up, just the art style?

It's part of it.

It's not just, no, it can't be the entirety of it.

I can't, that doesn't make sense.

There would be too much blame to lay it like one put

a huge part of it because everyone's like, God, that shit's ugly.

It's the first thing you say when you see you go why is it so ugly?

It's a part of it man a big part of it It's also like the again the fact that like you said It's like wait It's out wait.

It's free the cost the the I'm gonna say like something like Marvel rivals dropping and being another thing around the corner like all these other things, you know, being around the corner

Deadlock ain't even the same genre, but it is still like it's a shooter thing that's happening.

And again, like it's free.

Like it's just it's a combination of a lot of effects, but in particular, the art style being rough, just it guarantees that there's no

sticky paper on the backside of that thing has no chance to adhesive.

It's not adhesive.

It's not going to land anywhere.

It's sliding off of everybody.

I loved playing Rumbleverse.

Yes.

And so this is where I'm like, it's been a minute since there's been a thing where you're like, oh,

there was an art style design here and concept, and like they just failed to realize that in-game.

Because I feel like the last time I saw that large of a failure one to the other was like the Castlevania like conversion of Kojima artwork, right?

On the PS2, which is like, yeah, you made some fine PS2 models, but holy fuck, at the source, you know, and then I guess going the other way with the like, we're going to remove Kojima art entirely and just strip it down to superheroes.

Oh, people in the chat are saying Marvel Infinite's like a good example of this.

Like, Marvel Infinite, like, I think, like, that new mod that, like, cleans up the shading and makes that game look incredible, Infinite and Beyond.

Shout out to Max.

Is um,

it's like, yeah, you know what?

If that game hadn't looked like it was made out of string, people would have been into it.

Yeah, I get, but, like, well, I, the distinction I'm making here is that, like, there was some concept art at some point that looked like it was, it made sense, yeah, and then it failed in the translation.

Infinite, I think, looked ugly through and through, um,

but uh,

yeah, anyway, so

the conversion process failing is a huge part of why this probably fucking

bounced off of everybody.

But it's not certainly not the only thing.

I think as well, the eight years of dev and then the extra money buildup internally creates a pressure cooker situation.

It's going to be great, man.

Where they're like, this needs to perform immediately, you know?

And then, what were the numbers?

Like,

however, like less than 60 people or whatever?

Like, it was like, like, absurd, absurd lows on launch there that you're like, the server cost everywhere.

600 people peak.

Yeah.

At some point, you're like, like, fuck this, right?

Keeping it online is a problem.

This makes no sense.

So

we're going to be studying it for a while, but the ramifications will be felt.

And I'm sure somewhere else internally, Sony's going to, you know, have to diffuse that damage.

it's gonna be really interesting to see if like

a Sony bigwig decides that he's moving on to better things

in like six months, falling on a sword over this.

I don't know.

You would fucking hope

that you would fucking hope whoever kept giving this thing the green light.

I mean, C-suite immunity, though.

You know, yeah, come on.

Oh, yeah, the head of the head of Concord's team just quit.

Ah.

Well.

Well, anyway, speaking of things not selling well,

Square has come out and said that, yeah, Final Fantasy 16 and 7 Rebirth heavily underperformed according to reports of disappointing profits.

Can we take a quick break?

I have a lot to say about this, but I don't want to to say it with a full bladder.

Okay.

B-R-B.

All right.

So,

yes, we are seeing

Final Fantasy 16 and 7 Rebirth heavily underperformed as Square Enix reports disappointing profits.

Do we have the numbers on how much they actually sold?

So

in Q4 of the current fiscal year,

let's see if we can pull these out here.

There's a big old chart and

a lot of places to look on it.

Here.

Well, here's the.

Okay, I got the number.

You got it?

Okay.

These aren't from the same source.

These are from closer to the game's launches.

But it looks like FF16 sold around 3 million and FF7 Rebirth sold around to 2.5

as of a couple months ago.

So usually

when these types of stories come out, there's often a like, and how insane was the unreasonable expectation that Square said on these things.

However, I'm seeing that folks are pointing out that, like, in this instance,

the inflated expectations might not be the case because looking at the receipts with both FF5

and 7 Remake,

they did

not flip those sales.

So

in particular,

FF15

was 5 million day one, 6 million after one month, 7.7 million after a year, and 10 million as of the last update publicly.

Yeah, FF7 rebirth, sorry, remake may have sold around 7 million.

3.5 million after three days, 5 million after six months,

and yeah, more beyond.

But like, again, this is a lot of money.

So

they are like less than half of their last contemporaries.

Right, each of them.

Which is like wild because you know they're way more expensive than the last games that came out.

Yeah, they're the like that each they're both iterative improvements over the last thing directly, you know?

16 feeling like a sequel to what they were trying to do with 15's like

engine and stuff.

So yeah, this might be one of those instances where they're just kind of saying like, the unusual or the

sky-high expectations in this instance might not be

applicable.

This is like straight up, there is less money being made on the things that

one entry ago almost doubled these numbers.

Yeah, so

there's a lot to go into here.

There's a lot of reasons in every direction that would account for these.

The basic simple

at the most simple level, sequels always underperform compared to the original version.

Yes, but Final Fantasy doesn't go by the typical sequel rules because Final Fantasy is usually a complete, you know,

standoff, whatever.

But the direct sequels have always sold less.

Yeah, and there is a direct sequel in Rebirth from Remake, right?

Yeah.

So FF15 took forever to come out and got hyped up to shit.

Like, you remember FF15 versus

315 and all that.

And FF7 Remake was something people had been asking for since 1999.

Most anticipated remake in the video game industry ever.

But there's like more than that.

So, like, I can speak.

Like, I was talking to my friends about this last night about Rebirth.

Rebirth,

Rebirth is a direct sequel to FF7 Remake, and

I think that from, if they wanted to make their monies, I think that maybe making these games not quite remakes

may not have been the best idea because the remake series for Final Fantasy VII now caters like nearly exclusively to like, I hope you played the original FF7 in the mid-90s for you to really get all of of this in your chest

because we expect you to have.

There's part of that,

though, that is also like when the brand new remake is coming out, everyone doesn't know what they're getting, and everyone who wants one or the other wants a remake or wants a pseudo-sequel

are going to buy in to see what that's about.

And then,

yeah,

with the actual committed direction after the fact, there are people who surely bought Remake and were like, I'm not happy with this decision.

I wouldn't have bought it if I knew.

And then there are those who are like, oh, I love this, right?

But you still divide that number.

And then word of mouth has to do its thing once the next entry comes out, even if there are these other improvements.

So I'm playing Final Fantasy XIV with my friends last night, and we're doing a fucking...

you know, trial two,

and we're talking about rebirth.

And

I have three.

there's like four types of people in there.

People who didn't bother with

the remake series at all.

So pick them out.

There's a friend of mine who's like, I fucking hate the ending of FF7 Remake so much.

I wish I never played it.

I have no interest

in the future of the series.

So they're out.

Then there's generally liked it.

And then there's me who I'm like, I'm super mad that it's not weirder and further away from being a remake because I feel that I was like explicitly promised that it would be more different.

And like, I think both of those positions are just as valid and that they tried to split the difference and they failed to appeal to either of those groups.

It's not the same enough to be the same, and it's not different enough to be different.

Yeah.

I mean,

creatively, we've discussed this already with like Resident Evil remake and such, how it's like, you can do a faithful but loving, detailed remake of a thing and keep it 100% to what it is and then make it 1,000% of what it was.

Or you can go wild and change it up completely and make it so that it's compelling enough with what it's doing that's new to make it worth it.

Like I feel like I was playing through Final Fantasy VII, The Force Awakens.

Now, as to how that converts into lower sales for the next one, though, I think another part of this that is worth mentioning is

the

multi-platform versus exclusivity deals.

Oh, yeah.

So, like,

FF7 Rebirth and FF16 have been locked to that PlayStation 5 for a while.

15 came out all over the place,

all over the place, yeah,

you know, 13 came out all over the place very famously.

Um,

so even with all this, like, you know, anticipation and going into the first entry of a thing as well, I think all you have, you have these compounding effects that are just like you also don't have as much of a choice to get it where you want it now, you know.

It's like, okay, it's a PS5 exclusive.

Well, PS5s have been hard to get up until relatively recently.

A lot of people who might have had PS5s don't.

Yeah, I mean, I do remember the era of the podcast where it was like, yo, can people even get this thing?

No, not really.

No.

The only people who can get it is people like us who can call people and go, do you have one?

And they'll mail it to our house.

Well, eventually,

one time when I said it, people were like, actually, Wooly, that's not the case anymore.

It's actually fine now.

And I was like, oh, okay, cool.

That's good.

It took a couple of years.

It took a couple years, but here we are.

But yeah, so in a case where you're like, like, all right, so if some people are out on the idea or the concept and word of mouth is not doing what it should and all these things, like you need everything you can get.

And yeah, the sequel drop and the exclusivity drop are also weighing against it.

And this is the premier video game fucking franchise, right?

It's like it's the biggest shit ever.

And it doesn't seem like, you know, given that they're going to take this, the FF7 ARP in particular, in like these bigger directions and try to like fix or improve where they were, what they made last time, and so on.

Like these games are going to get more expensive as time goes on.

Oh, yeah.

So, like, and they're promising that, like, oh, yeah, they've said that, like, FF7R3 is going to be, like, fucking bombastic, incredible, blow-out audible.

So, when you play FF7 Rebirth, you can,

you've been plunking away at it in the background, right?

I stopped.

I was working on Integrade and I stopped.

Okay.

So, FF7 Rebirth is just fucking the money dripping yeah play the demo play the demo so it's it's wet with cash

um

like it is it's disgusting with cash and i came away from like a lot of sequences going for what though

you know like

like i would have like i look back at the first um

i look back at the very first trailer for ever crisis where it looked like Ever Crisis wasn't going to be a mobile nightmare, that Ever Crisis was just going to be a very flat FF7 remake with pre-rendered backgrounds and higher-res characters.

And I was like, oh, that's what I want.

That looks cheap, but it's what I want.

Yeah, and

it is like

the things you're describing, you have to buy the game to find out you have these problems with it, right?

But now that it's like two games in, you know, all these compounding effects kind of just spell out that, like, yeah, even Final Fantasy fucking seven is not immune.

It's too old.

It would be immune to this if this shit came out 10 years ago.

You think it was, it just, they just took too long.

The FF7 remake was on the fucking PS2 or PS3.

This conversation would be evaporating away because those people who played FF7 would be one, alive,

and two,

itching for more FF7.

They,

like,

now, now, now, hold on, though.

Okay, let's entertain this for a second.

The sequel you would have gotten slash remake you would have gotten would have been from the Advent children era into yes, right?

It would have been that, it would have been that mode, um,

And

probably would have been bolder with its choices and probably more terrible.

So

some bolder, worse choices would probably have been made.

You're right.

Mid-aughts.

Or maybe not, actually.

I think, maybe.

But

there's another thing that happens.

And I try and talk about this all the time because I love it.

Okay.

Wooly.

Mass Effect 1, 2, 3.

What was that?

2006,

2008, 2000.

Like.

Were two and three back to back?

It felt like it was.

Trilogy release dates.

Like, I'll just use this, right?

Yeah.

So Mass Effect trilogy came out on November 2012.

Was it, was it, okay, it was 2006, 2008,

2010,

I think, for Mass Effect.

Oh, no, wait, it was 2006.

2012 for Mass Effect 3.

Okay, so 2007 to 2012, right?

That's five years from, hey, that Mass Effect game looks good.

I'm going to pick up that Mass Effect game right

Yep fucking Final Fantasy VII Remake was announced in 2015

That's nine years ago and the second of three games just came out

That's too long

Mass Effect

too long Mass Effect 2 felt like a glorified DLC campaign.

It was super tiny and streaming Yeah, and it fucking ruled

I think,

yeah,

I don't know

whether or not

the full game kind of coming out, the full thing, the full

FF7

remake coming out

in that time.

That's been nine years.

That means if let's add three more, let's be really generous and add three more.

It'd be 2015 to 2027.

That is 12 years.

That is a trilogy that is fucking grade one to 12

of school.

That's too long.

That's too long.

And we're talking about a game that's a remake of a game from the 90s.

The scale of time is wrong.

If FF7R was the last release of that trilogy.

A rebirth, you mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Then it would be, it'd fit a lot better.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

Remake, like coming this late, right?

Alternatively, if remake was the entire game and there's no further waiting afterwards, and it was just a faithful one-to-one, but prettier.

I don't know if the money would ever make sense, but if FF7 Remake was like the whole game, but done cheaper in one shot, we would be looking at like a 20 million copy fucking probably in one shot.

One, like, just get it and go.

And like, it's, it's, it's exactly what you're expecting.

And we, and, you know, with

some bells and whistles, but like all in that, that one release.

Yeah, I think so.

Do you want, do you want to engage in the

least fair comparison possible?

Sure.

I would love to engage in that.

Okay.

So, in the time in between

the release date of FFC, sorry, the announcement of Final Fantasy VII Remake and today,

we have received Yakuza 0,

Kawami 6, Kawami 2, Fist of the North Star, Judgment, Like a Dragon, Lost Judgment, Ishin, Gaiden, Infinite Wealth.

Not that Final Fucking Fantasy VII is going to hold itself to that standard, but yes, that is, that is, now we're in the Duke Nukem forever times, right?

And wars have started and ended.

Every Harry Potter movie, every Lord of the Rings movie, every like.

But it's like, hey, like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we're still, and here's a, no, no, no, no.

And R1 came out, and we are actually still waiting for the third thing.

The people who like love Final Fantasy deep in their hearts love final fantasy deep in their hearts because when they were kids they fucking played like 12 of them

because they just kept coming out

like ff 13 to now

is like an adult

you're an adult now wait that game came out in 2016

I can see the the

thought, though, in the discussions here where it's like, this is the most anticipated video game of all time.

Why would you just make it one and done?

Why would you not make this a full process, a full thing?

The reason is

the most visually immaculate, expansive game ever made.

Make a cinematic universe instead of making a movie, right?

You see that this is where industry trends go, you know?

And so now we have to,

like, yeah, get this update that we're like, oh shit, FF7 Remake is not making enough money.

I feel like maybe

the chase for graphics and money is maybe starting to fall apart right now.

Because, like,

how much softer can you make Cloud's lips look?

Not much.

Not much.

I love the side story to that one where

just just a side note: Nomura was interviewed as to, like, hey, why does everyone look so pretty?

And he said, because when he was in high school, a friend of his was playing a game with an ugly character and it said, so I have to be ugly in games too?

You know what?

And you know what game that guy didn't play?

Concord.

Yeah.

Didn't, did not, did not pre-order a copy.

Incredible.

That's so funny.

Man.

Anyway, so

yeah, this is a

this is this is fucking rough news for them, obviously.

I mean, they're committed certainly to the path with R3, but who knows what like an FF17 or 18 would have to fucking bro.

Just face with this.

Make smaller games that

make PS2 games.

just make high-res ps2 games

as final fantasy as this big quintuple

why not you know i mean they should but it's like like is there a is there a casual pushback to that type of thing of scaling down i don't know yeah how's dragon quest doing did

quest 11 sell a lot of copies i think it sold four billion i mean japan will ensure that forever right

Yeah.

Yeah,

I wonder if, like, you know, you hit this tier where you're in the, like, this is whatever Call of Duty fucking, you know,

like video game fucking plateau

tier where it's like, can you step backwards?

Are you allowed?

Or do you just burn?

I think the funniest thing about this discussion is like, so Spider-Man 2 came out, and there were interviews with the dev.

No,

it was not interviews, it was anonymous comments by some of the devs because Spider-Man 2 costs five times as much as Spider-Man 1 did.

Costs like $250 instead of like $50 or I think it was $65.

And devs are like, why are we even spending it?

You can barely tell the difference.

And

Spider-Man 3 has an estimated budget of even higher than that.

And it's like, even the people making it going, I don't know if you can even tell,

are still having to make it bigger and bigger and bigger.

Yeah, you know, I'll answer my own question and say that when we factor in that talk the other day about the whole

investing in game companies and having to answer to investors and trying to beat the SP, trying to beat the attention economy over free games that you can play with your friends, your Fortnites and your Roblox and your fucking everything in your War Zones

and asking people for a full price game for two weeks to a month of their attention.

Yeah, they can continue.

Like, if they don't,

if something doesn't change, then we just go under, right?

And everything just drops.

So like adjustments have to come.

So did you play Ratchet and Clank or Rift Apart?

No.

So it's incredible.

It's fantastic.

It's a really great game.

It also barely broke even because it was very expensive, right?

So, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart came out in 21.

The prior game came out in 2016.

So, that was a five-year wait.

Ratchet and Clank games, there are fucking 13 that came out between 2002 and 2012.

And Ratchet and Clank did great over and over and over.

They were PS2 and PSP games.

They were fucking cheap.

And they made them and they were good.

Just make a bunch of them.

Just make a bunch of them.

Just make them cheap.

Dude, it used to be there were like three Final Fantasy games coming out like every year between the spin-offs and the main games and the spin-off spin-offs.

Final Fantasies are supposed to be console sellers, right?

Yeah.

They're supposed to be

instant attach rate growth.

Supposed to be.

But yeah, anyway, so that's the surprising bit with this story is the idea that it's like by the numbers, it's not just inflated expectation.

It is literally

lower returns from their direct

yeah, and I also want to talk about rebirth.

Rebirth, despite my complaints, is an incredible game.

It is an incredible game.

It is like the peak of AAA

in terms of presentation and like sound and music and all that, particularly music.

Holy fuck.

And like it has the prestige.

It has like the most prestige of anything.

It's a a fucking FF7 remake, man.

And for it to like do like

okay good,

it's like, oh man, this industry's gonna fucking crash soon.

FF7 remake a commercial failure.

I'll tell you one thing.

Those exclusivity deals are probably gonna be renegotiated.

I imagine.

It couldn't possibly have been worth it.

I imagine they're looking on the back end.

And we don't, again, they don't publicize all the numbers.

So we don't know just how much they

lost and or were given, right?

Because a lot of the time,

these deals are essentially

the exclusivity company buying copies, you know, in a way.

That's kind of like how the EGS works and stuff.

Man,

that shit's not going into the next fucking generation, man.

I don't see that.

I played Rebirth, and like, you feel the money, and then you keep going.

Like,

you didn't even need this whole section.

You just didn't even need the whole thing.

Like, oh,

that is true.

No layoff announcements just yet.

We

will see.

Um,

well look

I think I know how they can get

more copies sold.

How's that?

I think the missing ingredient from Final Fantasy is to get Cristiano Ronaldo in the game.

I think if you just get Ronaldo

to be a playable character.

Never mind Dact.

So this can save Final Fantasy.

I'm not up to date with sports, and I'm not Latin American, so

I don't know

Ronaldo.

This is the other Ronaldo, by the way.

So, I got super confused.

Yeah, you didn't know there was more than one, did you?

You didn't know there was more than one.

This was the guy from Ronaldino soccer.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, because there's Ronaldo, but then there's Cristiano Ronaldo, and then there's Ronaldino.

I got, oh, he's Portuguese, my mistake.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You didn't know.

I thought it was about, I thought they're putting in the Ronaldino soccer guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, because

that's a, that's, that's, these are, these are different people.

These are different people.

Um,

I think there's a real genius to saying he's coming to City of the Wharves

and not explaining that at all.

Like, he just, so Cristiano Ronaldo tweeted out, SNK, fucking Fatal Fury, a legend is joining a legendary game, but there's no details of what the fuck that means.

What does that fucking mean?

That means that Ronaldino is coming to Tekken

and the classic and Ronaldo classic,

Luis Nazaro de Lima, is coming to Street Fighter, clearly.

But like, is he voicing a character?

Is he gonna be in the background of a stage?

Is

the man himself a fighter?

I think the man himself will be a fighter.

That's wild as fuck.

It is wild wolf crazy.

Yes, it is completely insane, but I think that's what's happening.

And the reason why I think this is happening is because I'm pretty sure.

I might need to Google to verify this, but I'm pretty sure Saudi Arabia or Saudi Arabia owns his ass.

I think, um,

I think

he

signed a deal and he's over there for the soccer reasons.

And I think part of that

is

why this is so one-to-one.

Why now this noise?

Probably because Saudi.

I think so.

He joined the league.

He's getting paid.

He got an insane contract over there.

And yeah.

I'm going to guess that's directly how you get pushed from one street to the other.

You know?

Uh, I

fucking

I have no idea.

Like, I guess this is how you get

an insanely huge mainstream audience to hear about your game.

Um, this is the kind of thing that you would expect to go, uh, I guess, just

unknown, unmarketed, unannounced, samurai showdown in the background style.

But Ronaldo is like

one of the most popular human beings on planet Earth.

I feel dumb that I don't know about him, but I'm a video game man, not a sports man.

Well, again,

it's like, imagine if I told you, remember Michael Jordan?

Well, what if there's another Michael Jordan?

Yeah.

Also, I live in one of the two countries that doesn't really care about soccer/slash football.

Right?

So it's like,

yeah.

Man, we need a third Jordan, actually, just to fully round this up.

I thought we already had like multiple new Jordans.

We need, we need, we have B, you know, so we've got two.

There are two Will Smiths confirmed, right?

There's the giant bomb one, and then there's the Will Smith we know from Big Willie.

Yeah,

we can get a third, a third Jordan in there, you know.

Jordan Blanco.

I'm sure.

Right?

We've already got LeBron James and now Brawny James, right?

So

that's a thing.

I mean, it's his kid, but yeah.

Yeah.

Let's get the third one now.

Anyways,

no idea what the fuck this means.

More

news at 11, I suppose.

I want to see what it is, and I want it to be the man as like Roberto in rival schools.

In fucking

Mark of the Wharves, and I want him to be like wildly dissonant, like horribly out of place.

Kick off.

Yeah,

it's going to be a soccer man in the fighting game.

And it'll do the most for marketing.

than anything else they were planning.

We were talking about, oh yeah, Luke from streets, nah.

The fucking current god of

the soccer world.

Like, you might as well just add Goku to the fucking game.

People like that Goku.

Like, so I know you didn't know about him, but here's what you need to know is, like, randomly walking around, people will just try to tackle him.

Like, just full-on run up, like, ah!

Like, out of control, passing out Elvis-style reaction to him showing up in places.

I seen him and I'm crazed with fans, fan juice.

Yeah, um,

I want to say, what was it?

It was like there was like a thing where it's like, how is it possible for him to just walk in and get a cup of tea and then walk out of a place?

And like, they kind of like recorded how, and it's like, it's impossible.

It is, it is not, yeah.

So, anyway, um,

that is an unexpected

casting choice.

We will see what the fuck that means in a minute.

Not the only unexpected casting choice, however.

How about we put a Nero in your Dante so you can Dante while you Nero?

Bro.

I actually said last week, yo, we should see a trailer for this soon.

And so it manifested.

Bam.

Devil May Cry

anime trailer dropped this week.

That trailer is really confusing if you're a fan of the Devil May Cry series.

It is.

It is.

It is.

Yeah, so Dante's doing his thing.

He's looking cocky and cool and doing stuff.

I'm wondering if they're like, are they hiding the demon plot stuff so that he's going to beat up a bunch of scrubs?

I mean, there's demons in there.

You see Agni and Rudra on the fucking highway.

Yeah, yeah, true.

And then you see the bunny dude as well.

Arkham's in the trailer, for fuck's sake.

But you see Dante flopping around and stuff and doing his thing, and then he starts talking, and you're like, what the fuck?

It's not.

Why is it Nero?

And then it's like Johnny Young Bosch as Dante in Devil May Cry.

And so that's coming out in April of next year, to which everyone's like, what?

Is there a reason for this?

And Johnny Young Bosch is like, there is a reason.

And everyone is like, that's really strange, huh?

Is this some sort of twist set up?

Is there, do I?

And it's like, no, no, no, that, I don't think that would be the case.

I don't think you'd have a weird series of like, it's really Nero the whole time wearing a red jacket.

What the, right?

It's just, why, why not Dante?

Why not Ruben?

And so, over, I mean, Ken is no longer Ruben as well.

Ken got replaced in Street.

You know, Ruben has come up recent years going off the deep end and stuff.

And so the thought was like, oh, is he being

that finally got him?

Right.

Between that and the

bees from from space and shit.

Yeah.

So is that the reason why he's not being cast in these previous roles and stuff?

And then there's like, he also almost got shot in that one video going down.

Oh, I didn't know that.

I think so.

It was crazy.

But

there's

then a further.

So I think Johnny Youngbosch is properly speaking, and they're communicating publicly because he's probably going, like, dude, please, you gotta, like, people are coming at me.

Everything I've ever heard about Ruben Langdon is that he's a really nice, kind guy, and then you get onto certain topics

and off he goes.

Right.

He's whoa, whoa, look at him go.

So, anyway, obviously, fans that are like outraged by this and confused as to what's going on are going to be going nuts.

And so, I can just see them being like, Hey, we know what's going on, but can we let's talk about this?

Like, at least in a place where the most upset people can get the full picture and so he goes um

so Ruben then goes hey happy to see you know Johnny get this congrats to him.

That's awesome.

So to just kind of be like no anger.

I'm not mad.

This is not a I wasn't still, you know stolen from me type situation type thing.

And then Johnny

also then

basically in yeah, some further posts elaborates to say that like Ruben Langdon has quit acting period.

And

we want to drag him back in, and he wants to convince him to come back at some point.

But straight up, like, he's out of the game.

So, that's that.

There's nothing else to say.

Like, the guy who played the voice that you've known forever is no longer acting.

So,

they got another really good voice actor to do the job.

And that's, like, fair enough, man.

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, you know, even though there is a lot of conspiracy talk.

It doesn't have to be any sort of wild cutthroat thing.

It's just like, yeah, he's literally out.

You know who they should have gotten for it?

They should have gotten Tim Phillips.

Devil May Cry 1, Tim Phillips?

No.

Devil May Cry DMC Reboot.

Oh, Dante.

Oh, not in a million years.

They should have gotten that dude.

They should have gotten Dino in here.

Well, shit.

Who's Dante in Devil May Cry 1?

I fucking used to know it off the top of my head.

Yeah, yeah.

And now I can't remember it.

Because you used to know it, and I know that you know it.

I assumed that's what it was.

I'm just waiting for someone in the chat to say it so that I can say it.

Drew Coombs.

Drew Coombs.

Drew Combs.

Coombs.

Coombs.

Drew.

They should have gotten Drew to do it.

To fill our dark souls with light.

Yeah.

Listen, man, the reasons make sense.

This is certainly, this doesn't feel like a,

hey, here comes Kiefer Sutherland.

Get the fuck out of here, asshole.

Yeah, it's like what Dante passing the torch to Nero in five.

I don't think it was supposed to be this literal

where Nero just became Dante.

Like, I was so confused watching that trailer that I thought it was like a secret sequel and that it was Nero pretending to be Dante.

Yeah, immediately, I'm like, we're not doing, that's not, that's insane.

That's not happening.

This is not going to go that wild.

It's just a simple, like, what's the reason?

Oh, he's recast.

Okay.

You know what they should do, right?

And

if we had a David Hayter, like, it makes me kind of sick to my stomach tweet or something, that would be one thing, you know?

But if they need to,

they need to have season two have Virgil show up, voiced by Johnny Young Bosch.

He's doing his Adachi voice instead.

Hey, man.

yeah just changing it these bitches don't know about power he's that talented

he's that good

um i

do not i am not bothered by this because johnny young bosh is so fucking good he's great he's incredible i really am not bothered by this at all um

so we'll see what comes of i think the only person that i would have been like hey you know what that's all that's a great pick that wouldn't have been ruben or johnny would have been Alex, Alex Lee.

Hmm, to put to do an impression.

Yeah.

Well, I'd say this.

Like, you know, Tsuno's gone, and we don't know how long it's going to take before the next major entry comes out.

But clearly, if it were happening sooner rather than later, we would have found out about this much sooner, and Ruben would have been recast in that as well.

Right?

Like, it just, because there's radio silence on this franchise, the next thing that's coming is this.

But, but, um, you know, like maybe they might even get the guy currently doing Ken, for all we know.

Oh, man.

Someone in the chat just said they should get Ruben Langdon back to voice Nero.

Oh, my God, that'd be so fucking confusing.

Just throw it all out.

Start from scratch.

Burn it.

Oh, that'd be so weird.

Oh.

Anyway, um,

yeah.

That's uh,

yeah, please look forward to uh V voiced by uh Kiefer Sutherland.

Oh, that would.

Oh,

yeah.

Um, speaking of

recasting actors, yeah.

Um,

you know,

I know that you thought you might be interested in Oswald Cobblepot,

but how about

Oz Cobb?

Fuck, who gives a shit?

What if who gives a fuck if his name is Oz?

You can call him Oz Cobb, and he's like, but it's his fucking name, like, whatever.

So it wasn't so much.

So that was the first story where they're like, hey, the Penguin movie, they're calling him Oz Cobb as his name officially.

It's not Oswald Cobblepot.

Okay.

But then there was a second story that came out where the showrunner was like, Also,

we even though he's the penguin,

he's not really, he doesn't gonna be called that, and he doesn't like it.

And it's really because we're not going, we're not, this is not a comic book show, this is a crime drama.

It just happens to have fucking Batman in the background, and so it's like

or doesn't for that matter.

The trailer doesn't have Batman, it's very no, yeah, but no, Batman exists in the background of the setting, and so you're like, okay,

so just say you want to make the Sopranos in the DC universe.

It's that much is clear.

It's cowardly.

Because they call the show the penguin, but they're like, but we don't call him the penguin because it's serious, though.

And now we're back to we're ashamed of making a comic book thing.

All the way back.

Do you remember that era?

All the way back around.

The beginning of the comic book movie era when we were ashamed of it.

No bright colors.

Everyone's Everyone's wearing dark leather.

Shut the fuck up.

You don't know what the source material was.

And then the MCU and so on.

It's a big hit.

Yes, we love it.

Everyone's excited.

We're proud to be part of this franchise.

Actors are clawing their way in.

They want to get in on that paycheck.

It's going to last a fucking lifetime.

And now, bombs later, we're back to being embarrassed of the movies we're making.

So

did you ever see?

So what's way more interesting to me about The Penguin?

So you know that Colin Farrell was originally hired for the Penguin role in The Batman as Colin Farrell.

They're like, can you do like an American accent and just be Colin Farrell?

And he's like, I don't want to do that.

I want you to prosthetic me up and be like a gross, weird guy.

Oh, he asked for that.

Yes.

Wow.

And they were like, okay.

And that's why he looks like that in The Batman.

Well, do you know the I Think You Should Leave skit where Tim Robinson dresses up in old man makeup, but he gets stuck in the mall and just starts screaming, get this shit off me.

It's too hot.

It's too hot in here.

And just starts to freak out, like completely loses mind.

No.

So.

Colin Farrell, I was watching interviews.

This is way more interesting to me than the show.

Where

Colin Farrell is like, I regret that decision very badly

because we're film we're not filming him a movie we're filming a whole season of TV TV show and the suit that he's full top to body prosthetics because nothing in his body looks like that he doesn't look like that at all yeah so the suit that he was in was so hot

these like we could film scenes for tops four minutes long because I would start to sweat so badly the prosthetics would start to fall off.

So they had a tent next to every shop

filled with three industrial-grade AC units that I would go sit in between every take, and people had to wear like winter clothing to like bring me my coffee.

And it was like that for the whole production.

I was just like dying and sweating and like

you're an idiot.

Kelsey Grammar Beast or Lou Ferigno Hulk, except he asked for this and then signed up for the spin-off.

Like, you could have just hired a guy that looks like me already and not have any of these problems.

What the fuck?

What's Daddy DeVito up to?

Grab that fucker back from Always Sunny.

There are casters that are schlubby, fat dudes that you could have just cast instead.

Daddy isn't.

You don't have to take a handsome man and put him under 100 pounds of nonsense so that he can play an ugly guy.

You could just hire an ugly guy.

How fucking great was Danny DeVito?

He was incredible.

He thought.

Danny DeVito is incredible in literally everything he has ever done.

Batman returns.

Come on.

Just do it again.

Fuck it.

Yeah.

Dan DeVito is a saint and a wonderful guy, and he is small.

He is so much smaller than you think he is.

You think he's about my size?

No, he's actually way smaller than me.

And, like, the whole, like, oh, we want it to be a grounded crime drama where we want to make the Sopranos without saying that.

Okay, yeah,

but with Danny DeVito as the penguin, though, they're doing the penguin thing as Tony.

Then go.

There's nothing to stop you from doing it.

You can still do that show with him going,

you know what?

They should have just gotten fucking Purgas Meredith's coffin out of the earth and propped him up on the fucking set and had him do it.

Oh, like, you know,

it's so

maybe this is me expanding a little bit beyond, but it's so disrespectful to guys like Cesar Romero and Burgess Meredith.

Who did fucking great shit with the 60s, and Adam West, who did that goofy ass, silly shit to go, well, we're going to take it serious.

Not like

who?

Burgess Meredith, one of the fucking best actors of all time?

Oh, what?

Is the penguins quacking affectation too goofy for you?

Jokes on you, idiot.

That's Burgess Meredith's fucked up lungs from smoking because he's a freak and he wouldn't stop.

And he still lived to like 90-something.

Yeah, that's a regular noise that the man happened to make.

It is wild to live for the full horseshoe to come complete and see, like, nah, we're embarrassed of what we're doing again.

Get away from it.

Cape shit is back to being cape shit.

Yeah.

I saw a discussion of this.

How exciting it would be to have

Robert Pattison Batman going up against like 1966 the Penguin.

That would be a great movie.

I mean,

you'd have to use dead CG actor tech, you know, to commit to that.

I don't mean that.

I mean, like, the fucking purple hat and the fucking machine gun, fucking umbrella.

I saw some discussion as well about the fact that, like,

the

whole, like,

the names of the villains gala, of the Rogues Gallery, right?

Like, as you go, as you have, like, if you're kind of like, oh, he's embarrassed at the name, he doesn't want to use it and stuff.

Like, the idea that Batman, like, basically, is this whenever you have these characters, with the exception of like the Joker or Bane or so, he always calls them by their real name, like Cobblepot or, yeah, you know, or

Nigma and stuff, because it's like, I'm not buying into your stupid character bullets.

Yeah, I'm not going to, like, feed your consent.

You're an ego,

Edwards.

Right.

Everyone else does, and you love that everyone else leans into it.

So

they go, oh, shit, it's Too Faced.

Fuck.

Ah.

And I, and Batman is like, no, you're dent, dent.

And I'm going to call you that because I don't respect your stupid games.

You know?

And you're sick.

Right.

So having that be a thing where like you're the character's leaning away from it takes away from that entire motivation, you know, because they're supposed to be all about wanting to lean into that identity.

Sometimes.

Yeah.

Anyway, it's interesting.

I always like the penguin as one of Batman's villains because unlike 99% of them, he's not crazy.

He's just an asshole.

Like, there's no feasibility for him going to Arkham.

Like, he's a criminal.

He loves crime.

So, yeah.

I heartily look forward to,

I guess, what I guess James Gunn Superman is up next and whatever else is coming down the pipe, but you know,

I want to see a return to just like shame and hiding that we're superheroes.

Like, all this this nostalgia shit never goes to the shit that I want to see.

I want to see a fucking Super Dickery movie.

Can I not see that?

Am I not allowed?

You could probably see an animated Super Dickery cartoon.

No, but you can't see it.

You can't see $400 million budget feature film about fucking Superman blocking out the sun because he wants to ruin people's days at the beach.

Yeah, see, the problem is, is that there's a lot of people that want to see that, but not enough to warrant a theatrical release, but certainly enough to release it straight to Netflix and/or DVD.

Or Blu-ray, rather.

So, yeah, it's

time as a flashback.

And Lex Luther's the hero.

Maybe Amazon would fund that.

And hey,

you got a bright yellow Wolverine a minute ago.

Oh, dude, it's so funny that his fucking, his

mask just exists in non-space in the back of his head.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Also,

I mean, while this is a, you know, a little, a little colder, but not just Yellow Wolverine, you got fucking Patch and One Armed, Age of Apocalypse, and every other comic cover variant in quick succession as well.

So.

That looks stupid.

Yeah, it looks awesome.

All the dumb costumes.

You know, all of them.

Anyway.

Beyond that,

there's a lot of Goku's in that Goku game about Goku.

Yeah, okay.

I mean, we pretty much touched on all of it.

The only other thing I was going to mention is

odd, but I suppose, like, Platinum Games has regained the wonderful 101 trademark from Nintendo.

But they released the remastered version to Steam, and it turns out that they didn't have the original.

They just had that separately.

So

anyway, they filed for that.

So I don't know if this we got the trademark back for our least popular thing we've ever made that you don't care about.

Kamiya's gone, and they had already started on Project GG.

Does this

is there any kind of like, you know, did those things just get scrapped or are they gonna return to like who knows?

But either way, dude, Capcom was right to yell at those dudes

of Project Clover scene, like we are, we are like super far away, and like I could say with confidence, like, yeah, no, whoever like screamed at those dudes to make games that made money like 20 years ago, yeah, they were fucking dead right.

They made cool shit, but cool shit doesn't always sell.

I am like resentful of Bayonetta 3.

I'm like carrying that in my heart.

I can hear that.

I can hear that.

I still believe that good things should be good.

That's controversial.

I have not yet let go of the thought that good games ought to be good.

I also think this.

So, you know, hmm.

We might have to fight that out.

Let's take some letters.

Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to CastleSuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Please keep it brief.

Please, please, please.

Please.

Um.

Alright.

I got one coming in.

Dear Castle Super Beast Males, I'm a researcher in Canada who studies attraction to and relationships with fictional characters.

Fuck yeah.

You turned your goon into a into nerd information.

I'm researching.

Someone posted on the Reddit a quote by Tetsuya Nomura about how he makes his characters attractive because of an experience with a classmate that said they wouldn't play a game with unattractive characters.

I'm curious what your beliefs are about attractive characters in games.

Do you enjoy them more?

Are they attractive for you specifically, specifically, or do you consider them attractive broadly?

Last but not least, do you agree with Tetsuya Nomura that unattractive characters are not worth playing as?

From Columbia.

Okay, that's not what Nomura said.

That is

what he said.

That is not what he said.

Yeah.

However, I'll say this.

I sometimes feel like I would like that to be the character I'm playing as, but sometimes I don't.

I want games where you do and don't get that.

Cloud is one thing, but I don't want every single game I play to have every single character being like an 11 on 10.

That gets kind of boring.

It gets kind of stale.

And if it's not an art style thing, anime-wise, I do appreciate when someone puts the effort in, like

Monster and 20th Century Boys and

Pluto.

to having characters that look like they're not necessarily all be shown in and be seen in.

All right.

Counterpoint.

Now go tell a random amount of developers that they are the ones that should be making the ugly characters.

Square Enix can make the pretty characters, but you guys make some Uggos.

I think if you're out there making Uggos, though, you're probably somebody who enjoys Uggos and you're like, I'm going to lovingly craft this Uggo, right?

I think the Disco Elysium is full of really goofy-looking people because you have an artist that loves making these charactered face storied faces, you know, old lines and bullshit.

And like, that's all awesome too.

So I think you can also, like, you know, you can go a Hades route where everyone's hot in a wildly different way.

But whatever you choose, I just don't want it to always be the same thing.

So the Halo Effect is real.

People don't know about the Halo Effect.

The Halo Effect is your propensity to

overvalue the morality of somebody you find personally attractive.

It is one of the most easily demonstrated effects.

If you see a pretty girl do something morally questionable, you are more likely to give her the benefit of the doubt than if, like, a 95-year-old, ugly grandma did it.

It's just

the way people work.

Stab me, Steffi Bishi Sobo.

Right.

People tend to like more attractive things, not even people or characters.

Aesthetics is important to human taste.

People like it.

The problem run you run into, like Wooly, you're pointing out, is that like,

well,

everything on the menu should be a cake because everybody likes cakes, right?

Yes.

Well, what if I want a pie?

Well, go fuck yourself.

This is a cake house.

Yeah.

I think at the end of the day, the average person can appreciate interesting,

even if it's not like

pretty aesthetic, but like attractive, like, is so often like boiled down to like, I would like to fuck on them,

right?

Like,

there's two things that people ignore.

One is, people have weird tastes.

Need I remind you that my wife is streaming a Warhammer 40k computer role-playing game tonight because she saw a picture of a robotic skeleton.

You can't, like,

you can't possibly know what everybody's tastes are.

Go talk to a girl who has beauty in the beast shit all over her backpack and see what she thinks about the human form of the beast at the end of that movie.

And there's always a through line here.

There's always a little tightrope walk between the art style's expression and like what the characters actually look like.

If the art style is simplified enough, you're like, oh, these are barely human beings.

Like the blobs in Azumanga Dayo are all just like these little cute girls in high school that are just, they're shapes.

You know what I mean?

There's the short one, and then the tall one, and the long one, and the one with the spikes.

And you're like, yeah, you're just, you're just kind of shapes with emotions, you know?

So, like,

the taste thing is so wild because, like, you'll see these, these fucking.

She's in the chat.

How did that summon you?

Anyway, um,

um,

like, you'll see these dudes that are like, oh, gotta de-wocify this bullshit.

And it's always the same girl with the same body type in a fucking plain bikini.

Yeah.

And it's like, it's the most narrow, prescriptive, teenage boy idea of, that's hot, bro.

I have not seen enough Kingdom Heart designs to see enough diversity, like, not diverse, like, like, literally just different.

types of characters amongst the groups of like young kids with the hairs and stuff.

But I do like that,

yeah, whenever you

kind of have a moment where by having people look different enough, when someone like Pluto, I've mentioned this before, when an actual Bishonen walks into

the show, everyone's like, oh my God, the glory of this angel.

Look at this dude.

Because the contrast is so stark and strong, right?

And in those shows in particular, if you have someone that's meant to exude charisma, if it's supposed to be be Johan in fucking Monster, if you're supposed to have a Dio that just looks at you and you're like, oh my God, what?

Populate the fucking set

with regular looking people.

Whatever you want, I immediately am on my knees.

Like, you need that to happen.

Jojo's a really good example that you bring that up because you always see the main characters and they're always like incredible.

But then everyone around them is like normal looking people.

Yep.

Yep.

Griffith needs to look through your fucking soul and you have to go, oh, when he stares at you.

If everyone is just doing that all over the place, you don't feel special.

They don't feel any special.

But also, like, attractiveness doesn't necessarily, like, attractiveness is not necessarily sexual attraction.

It's like often like aesthetic appeal.

So, like, let's take grandmas, for example.

Willie, if I showed you a picture of a random grandma on the street that's 95 years old, your dick probably isn't going to get hard.

I don't know that, but I'm going to go with probably.

Okay.

Fair.

But

if if you see a nice old lady who's a little hunched and is wearing like the nice grandma outfit with pearls and big thick glasses and her hair is in a bun and she's cooking something and she looks like an adorable little grandma

that's a form of aesthetic beauty because she's exemplifying like the the typical archetype of like attractiveness for that role.

The obitarian, for example, is not that.

The Obitarian is the annoying, shitty old lady that's yelling at you at your fucking retail job.

By the way, the answer to the question you didn't ask is Helen Mirren.

Oh, yeah, well, that's not fair.

That's not fair.

Shut up.

Shut up.

Right?

Like,

think of like dudes that walk around that are like big, tall versions of me with bigger beards.

And, like, for I know there's at least one person I follow on Twitter that's obsessed with that body type.

But, like, I know a guy who looks like Santa Claus, right?

He's

where I live.

He's adorable because he looks like Santa Claus.

Yeah.

There's another facet of this as well where it's like, when it comes to playing a video game,

I know I have this.

I'm, I, I, it's a dead horse topic for me, but I want to be a character in a living world if possible.

I don't want to just have a like power fantasy or a full like reflection of just, I want to be hot in this.

I'd love to be somebody that I'm like, oh, you're as interesting as the people around you.

You're not a self-insert, you know.

You have your own, you know, traits and personality bits and quirks and weird things.

And all of that, I think, I also imagine, like, you, people are very willing to make the supporting cast look weird and different because there's the supporting cast, you know?

But like, there's a kind of vanilla-ness that often kind of has to be relatable on the main guy.

And I'm like, yeah, I love when you don't lean into that.

But I also know that marketing-wise, Big Soldier Shavedhead Man sold copies.

Oh, yeah, so I can imagine myself.

Yeah, so I'm like, I'm not gonna like blast you over the fact that you're like, hey, I want to sell this, so we're putting Booker on the cover, you know?

But it certainly sucks when it's the same boring shit over and over again.

And I would, I think it's more courageous and awesome to lean into the art of it, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, I think One Piece is a pretty solid example of like, yeah, everything is fucking nuts and exaggerated and crazy in that.

One Piece is both examples.

It actually lives and dies.

One

Piece is actually both examples of what we're talking about.

Because you have characters that are like big mom, who's like a fat, gigantic piece of shit who's exaggerated out to the end?

And then there's like, Oda, can you draw a sexy lady for us?

Now, draw a second sexy lady that looks different in any way from the first one.

Oh, you changed your hair color.

Okay, like Oda's idea of what a hot lady looks like is like an hourglass with a head popped on top wearing a bikini.

Like, he just, it's the same fucking thing every time.

It's hilarious.

Um,

there's an interesting effect in Vagabond where both the main characters, you know, Musashi,

both Musashi and Kojiro,

they look like real,

gorgeous people.

They are statuesque models of men.

And in Slam Duck as well, there's a lot of characters that are kind of like, you know, similar to that thing.

But like, while that is what they are when they're like, everything is fine,

they get disgusting over time

as they degrade, as shit gets fucked up, as things like

when they're in rough battlefield situations and they're getting haggard and they get more and more gross and stinky, you know?

And I appreciate that grime.

I appreciate that grit and fucking slime and dirt shoved in their faces because war sucks.

But yeah,

I just don't think it always needs to be a fucking super pretty character.

I think it's interesting.

There's two examples that came to mind while we were talking about this.

One is Grappler Backy,

in which you look at Eugiro, who's standing there.

He's a very cool aesthetic character.

And then you cut to that shot of him pushing his face through the glass.

And it's the most deformed

fucking nightmare freak shit ever.

Like, just

we're taking aesthetic characters and we're making them

like repulsive.

Like,

fucking gross.

Tengan Ashera, just the obsession with muscles.

It's just, it's just,

yeah.

One thing you cannot fucking do, though, is you cannot take a character who is simple anime, like, pretty guy face or pretty girl face and then make them realistic and ugly, or people will riot.

Terry Bogard's nose was a bit big on those screenshots initially, and it was fucking the apocalypse had come.

Ugly Chun Lee face from Marvel and ugly Ken face from 5, those things were like, you're like, god damn it, it's because I'm thinking of the Sprites and the Aki Man art, you know?

I think you got to be careful with that.

I think that FF7, Remake, and Rebirth are actually the perfect games to cycle around to this at the end because everybody in there is like the

fucking peak.

Like, I remember President Shinra is like a hot old dude, and it's like Barra is ridiculous.

He's Barra.

Even Corneo, if you're into that shit, he's the peak of that shit.

With

one exception, and that's Hojo.

Hojo is sitting around at the fucking supermodel office building, just being like a grimy, sweaty, ugly piece of shit to denote that he is the worst person in the whole game.

Yeah, no, like Barrett is the hottest Mr.

T on Infinite Earths.

Oh, yeah.

Like, like, like, free.

If that's what you want, you're getting the best version.

Yeah, anyway, that's kind of where it lands, you know?

And, like.

I don't know.

I also know when I look at, like,

some anime and stuff, they'll go out of their way to

have some, like

Jiu-Jitsu Kaisen has like this fucking silver-haired guy with like just the most glorious blue eyes.

And like the moment, the moment his eyes come out, it's like, oh God, just exuding the fuck.

I bet that guy'd be really good in a wizard battle or sorcerer battle, whatever the fuck the name of that thing is.

But the moment, but the moment his eyes are covered,

he's just like a fucking, he's a circle with spikes, he's a radish, you know, and it's like, so you could, you can put that emphasis in there, but yeah,

I don't know.

I just, I just think it's, it's more interesting, you know, it's more interesting to have different types of characters.

So, um, you know, and you know what I'd even say?

I would say I have a thing, I'm also interested in like, imagine a cast of a setting where you go, here's your main character, here's your supporting character, et cetera.

Now, take control away from the person who's supposed to be the main character and put it in this person over here.

And just see how that feels.

See what that does to the setting.

You know,

like

I play FF14, and like some of the things that make me annoyed in that game is like, you know what I would like to play as?

A fucking monster man.

Like when I played World of Warcraft, I could play a troll or a fucking cow dude, a Taurin, or an undead freak.

But every character in FF14 must be attractive.

There are no non-attractive options.

Except for for like that one,

that one

our

face that's fucked up.

But still,

I mean, shit, like, even a little moment like

fighting what is clearly an anime protagonist in

Armored Core, right?

You're like, oh, that's the spiky-haired, like spunky black-haired kid that's like, he's, he's, who's running on his own OP music, you know, and you're like, you just fucking target eliminated.

You know, even that moment, you know, without even seeing anyone's faces.

Yeah, it's great.

Good question.

Hope that answers that.

That's a great question.

All right.

And on that note, that'll do.

All right.

Have a good week, everybody.

Be safe out there.