The Game Was Better: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete

This is a Head Gum podcast.

Did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach?

Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families.

With Greenlight, you can send money to kids quickly, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.

Kids learn to earn, save, and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place.

Try Greenlight risk-free today at greenlight.com/slash wondry.

Okay, guys, really exciting here.

We're working on the script for Final Fantasy VII Advent Children.

And, you know, we've gotten some notes back.

We're parsing some things, but generally the headline is that Sephiroth doesn't seem menacing enough.

So we're going to punch up that section, you know, really

get at like why he's one of the most iconic villains of all time.

Cause I, you know, when that music kicks in, it's just like, we want that audience to be like, fuck yeah, here we go.

It's Sephiroth.

Oh, no.

So, um, so yeah.

Yeah, no, I really felt this with the temp animation.

Like, I was just watching, I was just like, this just isn't having the impact yet.

You know,

he's such a presence in the video game.

100%.

Yeah.

One of the most iconic villains in all of video games.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, just if you guys can pitch me some lines to bring out that, you know, that anger, that menace, that

threat.

And, you know, anything is, we're blue sky in here.

I'll put anything up on the board.

So why don't you guys kick me a few?

Okay,

I got one.

How about kind of like, you know, just a thing he could say.

Yeah.

You're mine, Cloud.

I'm going to wrap my legs around your body.

Okay.

Um,

because I'd feel very threatened if someone said that to me.

Yeah, that's pretty

aggressive.

Yeah, that, yes, that is threatening, but again, so this isn't what I wanted to highlight because I was hoping to just guide you guys in the right direction.

The real note behind the note is that a lot of these menacing lines are a little sexually charged.

So if we could pull back from that, you know,

I'll put it up on the board, but you know, just like

let's amplify that presence so uh again anything you got anything you got right right what about can i can i can i throw this one out there real quick yeah sure absolutely okay can you bear to see the planet suffer cloud doesn't that make you want to fuck me

uh

okay pretty intense

it uh that is intense it is intense and you know when i think about those those voice actors reading that line i'm i'm really excited about that first part the second

2013?

Can we say fuck?

I mean,

but I don't know if you could do it sexually.

Yeah.

What about blow my back out?

That's good.

That's a good old.

I'll put it up on the board, but I'm really looking for stuff that's not.

They're concerned about the relationship between Sephiroth and Cloud.

And

I'm like, I'm not.

I'm not like, this is the bad guy, you know?

So

he wants to destroy the planet, but I don't think it needs to involve fucking him.

No, I'm with you.

I mean,

look, we know these guys are going to duel, right?

It's the showdown we've been promised since they're coming back, since the end of Final Fantasy VII.

What about something like, my sword's longer, but yours is thicker?

Why don't we touch?

I don't know where I could incorporate that line into the fight sequence.

I don't want to take a beat and have Sephiroth comparing.

You know what?

I'm going to put it on the board so we can move past it.

But just

anything you do.

Sephiroth is like, he's more than just an antagonist to Cloud, right?

He's more than just his relationship to Cloud.

There's like a lot.

He's a three-dimensional character.

So he should be able to do some, say some things not to cloud.

Right.

Sure.

Yes.

He has the, you know, obviously the relationship with

the Lifespring, with Mother, right?

With Mother.

He's always going to be a little bit more.

Yeah, the the Life Stream, yeah.

So,

how about this?

Mother, days have come again,

and so have I.

Okay.

Mother, I want some mommy milkers from Sephiroth.

Google Sephiroth.

I don't want him.

I don't want him talking to

the planet, live stream, or Aerith in terms of milkers.

Okay.

Look, I get the note.

I think I understand.

How about something that's a little bit more abstract?

Like,

hey, Cloud, have you checked out Nick Weiger's deviant art page?

He's got some cool positions we should try out.

Like, he's already drawn what we should do in reality now.

I didn't know you had a deviant art page, but I'm going to have to send you to HR.

I'll link you.

I'll send you a link.

No, I don't, I don't send that to me.

Don't send that to me.

The current year is 2004, so I'll email you this link.

I know there's no more.

No, I don't want that.

I don't want, I don't, don't, please don't send me.

Okay, it's email.

Check your Outlook.

No, I've seen you've, I can see that it's popping up on my Outlook multiple times.

You're sending it multiple times.

I don't want to click any of these links.

It's mostly Rouge the Bat, but there is some Final Fantasy content.

How about that?

How about we call up my friend Rouge the Bat?

Okay,

now it's pretty good.

No, I don't want.

There's no fucking

in the movie.

There's no fucking.

There's no fucking movie.

Okay, well, why are we making a movie?

What?

Great question.

Why are we making this movie?

We open up our flip phones and dilly-dally, shilly-shally, as we discuss polarizing 2005 animated film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Abadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premier Video Game Podcast, where this week we are talking about 2005's

direct to home video release,

Final Fantasy VII, Advent Children, and we're watching the most recent version of it.

So, Advent Children Complete.

It is a longer than two-hour film that dives into the story that happens after Final Fantasy VII, specifically two years after Final Fantasy VII.

And I think we've got a lot to say, and I'm really excited to say it, because,

you know, I love this shit.

There's no shortage of things to talk about with FF7 Advent Children, which we're talking about somewhat on the eve

as the release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth approaches.

Yeah, it's exactly a week and a few days before.

But

it's timely nonetheless, you know, and I'm excited because I had never seen this before.

Yes.

well, I had never seen the extended cut before, the two-hour, six-minute one.

This is one that I'd forgotten.

I basically like it exited my brain in 2006.

And really, what I was like, my thoughts were, and I'll get it, get into it, but I like, I just kind of was like, oh, yeah, it looked cool, but it kind of was bad.

And that's that was basically the entirety of my take on Final Fantasy VIII Advent Children.

I mean, just thinking about my experience so far,

I

played through Final Fantasy VII

and playing through Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Now I've watched this.

I've just ingested a lot of

information, a lot of Final Fantasy VII information.

My brain has been.

I just know the canon, yeah.

Yeah,

I'm doing my due diligence here, deep diving.

Yeah.

Loaded up with materia.

I feel like there is also

an enormous,

an enormous

amount of canon that is no longer available.

For example, there is like a mobile game that had extra canon.

There was a PS2 game about Vincent, who's the, was it Dirge of Cerberus?

Oh, that's right.

I forgot about that.

There's so much more canon for this that it really, I think it sets, uh,

sets sort of the foundation and the precedent for the baffling canon of Kingdom Hearts, which is also by the same, uh, I think basically some of the same team and certainly Tetsu Nomura, who directed, co-directed this and was the character designer for Final Fantasy VII.

And I believe he is the lead director on the remakes and rebirth games.

He's certainly involved in rebirth.

I don't remember what capacity he was involved in remake, but

yeah, we'll certainly be talking about Nomura soon.

We have so much to talk about.

Yeah, but before we do that,

first up, I want to remind everyone that this month's We Play, You Play, our full episode dedicated to one game at length, will be Baldur's Gate 3.

The long-awaited BG3 episode is coming next Monday, February 26th.

So go ahead and look forward to that.

And we will try to, you know, this is a game with a lot of spoilerable content, obviously.

So we're going to do our, we haven't recorded this episode yet, but we're going to do our best diligence to try to parcel that off so that if you want to listen to portions of the episode, but you don't want the whole game spoiled because you haven't finished it yet, hopefully you will have some good off-ramps there.

So, but anyway, I'm very, very excited to talk to y'all about BG3 in just a few days from now.

Where are you?

Where are you at right now in the game?

I'm in Act 3.

Okay.

I just did,

I mean,

you can talk vaguely.

Talk very generally.

I just did a quest.

There's a quest that involves two parts.

Yes.

Two separate parts.

Yes, this is kind of the main story thrust of the third act.

I just did one of them, and I considered it maybe the most fun I've had in the entire game.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And I've been enjoying the game.

Like, that's the thing.

The game is full of good stuff.

There was a thing that I did that I was like, I can't believe this is in a video game.

This rock.

I think you're on track.

Yeah.

Uh, to finish for the record.

I am playing a little less canonically,

I think.

Uh,

I, so I was going to talk about this on, you know, in our section about what we've been playing.

Uh, so if, if we can kind of bridge, then I can continue to talk about it.

But otherwise, I'm not going to have anything to talk about during that segment.

Let's do that now, then.

It's time for the question we always ask.

Let's talk about some video games we're playing right now.

What are you playing?

What am I playing?

So, I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3.

Yeah, it's a real relief that Resident Evil didn't interject there.

Yeah.

Well, he's not always around.

He's got his own life.

I was really worried because we had a natural sort of

transition to your thoughts, and I was worried that he was going to derail us completely.

It was very nice.

It's smooth.

So

as I, as I sent you guys, I am off the map.

I am in an area where the map is not rendered and it is looks like a glitch.

I

jumped to a place that I think I'm not supposed to jump to because I was like, oh, it's okay.

As long as I have one HP, I can bring these guys back.

And I kind of like moved the cursor around until I found a small pixelated segment of area that I could jump to because I was like, you have to be able to get down there.

And now I'm down there.

And

I'm concerned that I'm going to have to go backwards and re reload from previously because I'm not sure what I'm doing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you jumped out of collision, you might

have to reload there.

So I'm,

So that's where I am

physically in the game.

Then emotionally, I learned something that has really helped me progress.

I don't know if I'm in act two or if I'm somehow bypassing the act structure of the game because I'm beyond where it says act two starts.

But I have not yet received the message that Matt told me I'd get that was like, you know, when you go beyond here, you'll, you, like, there's like a significant, like you said, there's like a significant like save screen that's like, progress beyond here will, make sure you don't have any loose ends to tie up, I think is what I'm saying.

I could ask you, I feel like I could ask

if you've ventured past this point, because it's not a spoiler point, like it's not a story thing at all.

Have you gone through the mountain pass at all?

Or did you go, did you come out from the underdark?

Then I think you're, I think

I'm past there,

I'm on a a second map

Then I think you're

on a fifth map.

I don't know who the fuck I am

What I so here's the little thing that I've learned that really has helped me speed through some of this game

I have

been entering areas and as I've said people all turn and attack me and they're upset about something I've done earlier that again, I never intended to do.

I'm playing truly chaotic neutral where every choice is based on like how the person is talking to me.

What I've realized, and this is going to seem obvious, if I enter an area and all the NPCs are read as soon as I get there, I can just open up on them.

Like I don't have to wait for them to attack me.

And that has made it obvious to me what areas

the NPCs are not previously engaged with their anger with me and has also made it so that I'm not dying as much because I'll walk into a thing and then like your initiative rolls and like a hundred and ten fucking people are up at the top of the screen and they're all angry and they're like people.

They're angry people.

So now I can, now that I've realized that, I'm like, oh, this area is all red.

I can sneak in and merc these guys one by one without like having,

you know,

to fight 25 NPCs at the same time.

And that's, that's really made it speedier.

And I wonder how much of the loot that I'm seeing you guys have seen also.

Because

I'm clearing everybody.

Which is.

Yeah, I mean, some of the stuff that you will find, it's interesting because I think there is overlap in terms of how you're playing it.

And I know there's, there's not like traditional D and D alignments in

5th edition or in Baldur's Gate 3.

And I know like it's it's reductive to say good or evil, but just in terms of shorthand, it's like,

I think sometimes what you will get from killing an NPC, you might get like some item that they have on their person.

If you're playing a more virtuous playthrough, you might get that same item as like a quest reward.

Uh, there's a lot of things like that, or, or you might pickpocket something from somebody that, again, they might get just give to you or sell to you later.

So, I think a lot of the loot is accessible, though there are a few items that, you know, notably Minthara, and this is early enough in the game where it's act one, and I think people know this.

That's the big character, the big NPC npc that's only available uh or at least until recently was only available in one playthrough uh mintara has some armor uh on and and some other items uh on her person that you will get if you defeat them uh but otherwise if they join your party it's just her gear so oh i don't know who that person is so i may have executed that person what this is what will we i'm very excited to talk at length about your particular playthrough but like you're doing things

that are very off the off the map in terms of not just literally, but also just in terms of how one of these playthroughs normally progresses because you did things kind of out of sequence.

It's there.

Yeah.

So Minthara would normally be someone that you would befriend in the goblin camp by turning on the tieflings in that process, but you might have just killed Minthara and then turned on the tieflings anyway.

Is there like a...

Obviously, this is very different, but you know, in like the Telltale games, at the end of like each chapter,

it'll like tell you what you did and what percentage and like what percentage I don't need the percentage.

Is there a way that I can see what I've done?

Because like I definitely remember a lot of stuff, but there's like I'm sure there's like small things that I'm like, I don't even remember what I did in that, in that instance.

I'm sure if I just go through my journal, yeah, I think you go through the quest log.

Yeah, it's not a the quest log isn't like great.

It's not super comprehensive, but there's enough where you can kind of scroll through and it will say like if you abandon a quest or if something was on with like you just you finished something in a different way.

Like, it'll, it'll have those details.

I do know that, I guess, I just did look at this because I just did, I did a quest yesterday

where the mission was to save a bunch of people and it completed because they all died.

It was just like, okay.

Like, and I was trying my best.

Yeah, right, yeah.

But then they just all died.

And it's like, okay, well, that quest is over.

And then if you, I guess you go, if you go to the journals, like, no one, there were no survivors.

I also exited the underdark before i did the goblin camp

like i yeah you're so again you're just totally out of sequence in terms of what i it's it's amazing that the game can accommodate this but it's you're out of sequence in terms of how people normally progress you find out in the code it's written that it's a heather and campbell playthrough

well but that's that's what i've been playing matt it sounds like you've also been playing balder's gate 3 yeah and nick i think you're playing it also

It's the only thing I'm playing, but I have something else to talk about.

I am back in my bullshit.

Not that I like stopped for any particular reason, but I guess I did stop to play Final Fantasy VII.

But

what I've been doing right now, the stuff I've been doing in Baldur's Gate 3

has reminded me why I loved it to begin with.

It's also a good game where I feel like some games you can't pick back up after a significant amount of time,

where Baldur's Gate 3, I feel like, controls really easily and like smoothly, where I don't have to, like, I'm not memorizing button combinations, right?

I know what brings up my,

like, my wheels, uh, and I know what I have on them, and it's very good about telling you where you have to go.

Or, you know, in general, the area where you have to go.

Because you don't remember which shoulder button shoots the grappling hook.

Yeah.

You know, it's, it's because it's, it's not, it's a turn-based game.

Uh, there's, it's a little bit less of a steep learning curve in terms of getting back into it.

So yeah, it's more forgiving in that way.

So I've been enjoying it so much.

But

I'm also, I'm playing through Final Fantasy VII Remake.

And

I have a suspicion that

I don't want to vocalize.

Okay.

Not until I'm done with it and I know I'm correct.

But I'm playing through it and

I am really, really enjoying it.

I wish

every game was this.

Like, I don't know.

It's like, it's beautiful.

It looks great.

I really love the combat.

I love materia.

I love all this.

I just, it's just such a great game, and I'm so glad that I finally came to it because I'm hopefully going to finish it before

the leap day.

the uh the where when uh when rebirth comes out um but you know that's it's still it's uh

we're about halfway there on the, on the calendar.

I still got a little bit of time.

I think I can knock it out.

I think if I really focus, I can knock out the rest of Baldur's Gate 3

before the record.

Sounds crazy.

I think I might be able to do it and then get back in there and

complete remake as well.

But, I mean, that's pretty much it for me.

I've also been just getting a lot of use out of my portal, by the way.

Just been playing

Walter's Gate 3 on the portal.

The screen's big enough for that.

Screen's huge.

Wow.

I love the screen.

It's great.

It's really, really fun.

And just

that, but that's it for me.

What about you, Nicholas?

I think you should.

Nicholas.

Am I in trouble?

I don't know.

We'll see.

Trying to remember if I stole something from the kitchen.

I don't know.

I felt like being

cordial for some reason.

All right.

Thanks, Matthew.

Oh, wait, you know what?

I heard it, and I don't like it.

I think you should try to

budget your time how you can,

but I think you should prioritize trying to finish Baldur's Gate 3 before we talk about it.

I don't know if we're going to have time to talk about the end game.

I'm certainly not thinking Heather's going to get there, but like the end game will at least inform, it's pretty consequential.

It may inform your thoughts on your playthrough overall.

Also, oh, real quick too, and I don't think I'm going to do this yet.

Zig texted me yesterday and asked if I was playing Helldivers 2, and I said no, but I could be convinced.

And he did say, help me spread democracy.

And that almost was enough.

Like, I almost just did it.

I've heard some very positive things about Helldivers 2.

I just don't think I'm going to have any time.

I don't know if it's the type of game for me, but everything I've seen about it looks cool.

It looks awesome.

But maybe I'll watch a YouTube video or something, and then we'll see.

But, you know, that's just how it goes.

Somebody tells you to get a video game, and then you get it, and then you play it for a little while, don't you?

Oh, boy.

Hopefully you have fun.

Rochelle, did you ever return to Baldur's gate three i know you were playing it for a time um i did go back and i do not remember what i was doing like just plot wise i had no idea um where i was so i played for a little bit got some quests done uh-huh but it just like seems like i'm in this like little quests mode like there's like right i'm like being a detective right now

i am so you're in act three you're in baldersgate the city Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There is, there is some like like straight up like detective segments of that arc of the game.

You're going to stick with it, TBD?

Yeah, I will.

Cause I want to get to the meat.

Because right now it just feels like I'm on a wild goose chase.

Yes.

And I just want to get, I want to get back into the story.

Hell yeah.

There's so much in Act 3.

I think it's like maybe 40% of the game, which is kind of crazy to think about.

You get there and you've like, I've played 100 hours and like, oh, there's like more.

There's like almost as much as what I've already done still left when it feels like you're heading towards the finish line.

All right.

Well, hey, I'll talk about what I'm playing.

What are you playing?

I'm playing Boulder's Gate 3.

Thanks, Eric.

I'm playing Boulder's Gate 3.

But also,

I picked up this book.

We were talking art books with our friend Ashley Eskada last week.

And I picked up this book, NES Endings Compendium.

Wow.

This is by Ray Esteban as the author, and it's published by Press Run.

This is a beautiful hardcover book that is available.

You can still get a copy.

And what it is, is it's a catalog of by year, and this one covers 1985 through 1989.

So it is volume one, every game that was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, aka the Famicom, in North America, and lists all the games and shows all of their endings.

And so, like, Super Mario Brothers is here, Matt, you can see this in the studio.

It's like, it kind of shows, it gives some context in terms of like what is actually happening here.

And then it has screenshots of what the ending is.

And what's amazing about this is a time capsule is

just, you really get a sense of where video games were at that point in time, where some of the endings are, and Matt, I'll show you the ending for this game.

I had Gradius that I never finished as a kid.

This was a Konami game that had the Konami code.

This was a schmupp, and the ending is, you know, flies it like a Death Star.

It's like a still of a ship flying towards a Death Star, the Death Star exploding, and then the words, congratulations and all caps.

And that's all you get for finishing this game.

And that was so many games in that era.

Heather, I'm sure you remember this as well, of like,

yeah, again, this is another one.

This is a, this is.

This is Akari Warriors, another game I had.

And the ending is, you have saved the world.

Congratulations.

Peace has arrived at last.

So a lot of them are really just text.

Even for games that are well known and well-regarded, it's just like there just wasn't a lot of cartridge space or, you know, it wasn't a thing that was prioritized in development because the point of a game then was to play it.

It wasn't to experience the story.

All that said, where you see this really contrast, and this is a game that I think has been kind of a little bit forgotten.

And if anything, kind of superseded by the remakes that came, or not remakes, but the, you know,

the, I guess, requels, reboots, or whatever that came in the Xbox era.

Ninja Gaiden,

which was in the NES era, was just like remarkable as a console game in terms of its cutscenes, in terms of its cinematics.

So I'll show some of these to you here, Matt.

These are like really gorgeous.

Yeah, it's this amazing pixel art.

And

it has like really cool shot composition.

And

there's actually like a story that's being told between levels.

And at the time, it was like pretty revolutionary.

Although this stuff did exist on the PC side, on the console side, you just weren't seeing this in games.

And it has like this really, you know, I never finished this game because it was super fucking hard, but it has like an actual like...

kind of like ending with real dialogue and real consequence and we're seeing these characters we're seeing Ryu and Irene like finally

reunite and it actually just does a lot to

give you some propulsion through the game that's not just platforming and combat.

So yeah, each of these is shown that they, again, it's just amazing how comprehensive this is.

Because it lists basically every single game that was released commercially.

And then the ones that have a little bit more of an ending are given more real estate in terms of number of pages.

The ones that are,

congratulations, Bomberman becomes runner.

See you again in Load Runner.

uh just kind of get a page or half a page uh but it but it is just like a really really cool book it's a really beautiful volume and if you have any sort of nostalgia for this era i definitely recommend it so the book is called nes endings compendium um and i've really been enjoying uh looking through it and uh

reminding myself of all these extremely bad endings of very very hard games that's awesome yeah uh i do like uh

like an art book like that i have a the one for Tears of the Kingdom.

And

it arrived after I beat the game.

So I was like, I don't really need, I don't need this.

I kind of saw a lot of the stuff.

But

it's nice on a shelf.

All those books always look nice on a shelf or a coffee table.

Classic coffee table book.

Yeah.

I wish there were more coffee tables in a house.

Because I have a lot of books that would work great as a coffee table.

But I only have one coffee table, you know?

That's right.

I'm thinking about it as I say it out loud.

It's weird that it's called a coffee table when I have never, it's so low to the ground.

Like, I've never put my coffee on my coffee table.

Like, I've only got books there and a plant.

Uh, let me tell you something.

If I pick up a cup with coffee in it, I'm not putting that thing down until it's done.

Okay?

Call him Java Apadaka.

Yeah, that's right.

It's always swallowing a hot brown.

Yeah.

Yuck.

Here's one.

This is the one I was looking for.

The ending of Paperboy

is

the ending is just a newspaper that says, Paperboy retires in glory.

It sucks so bad.

And this little like seven-year-old's done working for the rest of his life.

And then the context that's in the caption that accompanies it is,

disappointingly, this event is communicated via an ending screen that's copied and pasted.

It's simply the opening screen image with a different headline.

Oh, my God.

It's the most half-assed ending.

That's so funny.

But yeah, I love this.

NES ending is compendium.

Hell yeah.

Man, I have these old...

You know, it'd be a fun segment, and I'll pitch it to you guys right here live on the show.

I have these very old how-to-beat NES games books, like super old paperbacks.

And it would be fun to read a section of

each of them, like of a game like that tells you what to do and have you guys guess what the game could be.

That's

always fun.

That's really fun.

It's also written very clinically.

It's like head left down the hallway sometimes.

Right.

That's fun.

We should do that.

That's really, really good.

We'll do that at some point.

I think that would be fun time.

But not today.

Not today.

ED is more common than you think and simpler to treat than ever.

Through HIMS, you can connect online with a licensed provider to access personalized treatment options discreetly on your terms.

Through HIMS, you can access personalized prescription treatment options for ED like hard mints and SexRX Plus climax control if prescribed.

HIMS offers access to ED treatment options ranging from hard mints to trusted generics that cost 95% less than the brand names if prescribed.

Now that's quite a savings.

You shouldn't have to go out of your way to feel like yourself.

HIMS brings expert care straight to you with 100% online access to personalized treatments that put your goals first.

This isn't a one-size-fits-all care that forgets you in the waiting room.

It's your health and goals put first with real medical providers making sure you get what you need to get results.

Think of HIMS as your digital front door that gets you back to your old self with simple 100% online access to trusted treatments for ED and more, all in one place.

To get simple access to personalized affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss, and more, visit him.com slash get played.

That's him.com slash get played for your free online visit.

HIMS.com slash get played.

Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan.

Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality.

Prescription required.

See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information.

Guys, fall is here.

The beers are colder, the football's back, and the fits are getting layered.

But if you're still rocking old beat-up boxers under those flannels and jeans, we gotta talk.

It's time to upgrade to me undies.

These things are ridiculously soft.

Like, don't want to take them off soft, if you catch my drift.

They're made with micromodal fabric that feels like a cloud, but they still breathe when things heat up.

And just in time for spooky season, Me Undies limited edition Halloween line features festive prints, including glow-in-the-dark underwear, so you can bring the spooky vibes underneath it all, because that's what you want.

Your underwear to be scary.

Me Undies has a cut for every butt with over 20 styles in 100 different colors and prints.

Me Undy's signature super soft micro-modal fabric is breathable, stretchy, and unbelievably cozy, perfect for crisp mornings, chilly nights, and everything in between.

Whether you're layering up for a hike or lounging in flannel all day, MeUndies moves with you and keeps you comfy.

Want even more seasonal comfort?

Try the Breathe Line, designed for moisture wicking and anti-odor tech to keep you fresh throughout fall workouts or just a long day of pumpkin picking.

I love it.

They use sustainably sourced materials and work with partners that care for their workers.

Not happy with your first pair of undies?

It's on me undies.

With more than 30 million pairs sold and 90,000 five-star reviews, me undies are an essential summer must-have for every drawer.

I've talked about the undies, okay?

I've talked about me undies.

And folks, the me stands for me, mine, me, I, Matt.

I got the undies.

And I loves them.

Because guess what?

The old undies, I gone back to them one time in a moment of weakness, right?

Laundry Day, all my me undies are in the freaking wash.

And I put on an old pair of undies, and I'm just like, ow, ow, ah, I can't breathe.

Ah, it hurts.

Oh no, it stinks.

But with the meundies on, those are not my problem anymore.

Right now, as a listener to my show, you can get cozy and spooky for less with deals up to 50% off at meundies.com/slash get played and enter promo code get played.

That's meundies.com slash get played.

Promo code get played for up to 50% off.

Meundies.

That's comfort Made for All.

Today we're talking about Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, the kind of movie our segment title, The Game Was Better, was invented for.

This movie released on September 14th, 2005 in Japan and then I believe came to other territories in 2006.

Final Fantasy VII Advent Advent Children Complete, which is the version we're talking about, was released in 2009 with an additional 26 minutes of footage, and it was directed by Tetsuya Nomura, who

the third most important person at Square Enix, maybe historically, after Sakaguchi and Yuji Hori.

You know, he's definitely the Kingdom Hearts, I think, is

what he's most known for, but a huge impact in the Final Fantasy franchise.

Yeah, because he's the character designer for Final Fantasy VII.

He does some monster designs for Final Fantasy VI, I believe.

And then because of Final Fantasy VII's success, he becomes for a for a short minute, like one of the hottest commodities at Square Enix.

You know, he designs, uh, he designs Final Fantasy VIII characters.

He designs all of the Kingdom Hearts characters.

Uh, he, he directs Final Fantasy VII Advent Children.

I think he designs lightning.

I'm almost positive that he's designing Final Fantasy 13.

I think he also designs 10.

But yeah, he becomes like one of the trilogy of voices that you can single out and be like, oh,

this is a Tetsu Nomura decision right here.

And I think I talked to you guys about this on text, which is that

to put yourself in the mindset of 2005,

like Spirits Within comes out and almost destroys Square Enix as a company or Squaresoft as a company.

So Final Fantasy X comes out.

There's a resurgence.

But if you're going to sort of like write the ship, you're going to start leaning a little bit more heavily on one of your most successful properties, and that's going to be Final Fantasy VII.

And after

the Kingdom Hearts secret ending,

which is like this fully CG battle, Tetsu Nomura comes up up with this idea that they should make a movie that features a lot of action sequences and that they should maybe set it in the world of Final Fantasy VII because Final Fantasy VII is this, you know, is like the big harbinger of the company.

Um,

and they create a proof of concept for, I think, the Venice Film Festival.

And I might be getting some of this wrong because I'm not a film journalist or a video game journalist and haven't been for a long time,

but I'm doing a lot of this from memory, and I think I remember a significant portion of it.

They do like a 23-minute demo version for, I think, the Venice Film Festival.

The fan reaction is so positive that they end up going forward with an entire film, which is going to be 60 minutes long.

It ends up being 100 minutes when they release it.

And it is such a success that it pushes PlayStation 3s.

Like, people are buying.

PlayStation 3 because of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children.

And Kingdom Hearts is such a huge hit the same year, 2005, that,

or Kingdom Hearts 2,

that Tetsu Nomura is sort of given this internal carte blanche, like make what you want to make.

And so he pitches Final Fantasy 13 Verses, which stars Noctis and Stella and these original cast of characters.

They release this incredible CG trailer somewhere around 2007.

And it ties up such an enormous amount of resources for the next decade plus.

Like, I don't know when Final Fantasy 13 versus eventually becomes rebranded as 15 and Tetsu Nomura is taken off the project, but all of this happens because of this avalanche of

Final Fantasy VII content that kind of puts him up on a pedestal and then ends up costing Square Enix a huge amount of money and resources, which is why they start leaning into mobile games.

It's a wild film to think about in context because it is certainly better than Spirits Within, but it is not a good movie.

I will say that.

Yeah.

Also,

it is deeply influential in action movies, creates a sort of like visual language for action cinema that is still being referenced today.

There was an interview done with the director of the Marvels where she said,

I went into this movie leaning on Advent children because I wanted to duplicate that feeling from those action sequences.

Paid off.

I will say that

Tetsuya Nomura and what you were talking about in terms of the Japanese video game industry specifically and how auteurs are treated there is

happened a few times where

a game designer, like a name game designer, has been given so much leeway and such massive budgets

and have gone, you know, way over schedule and have ended up with this boondoggle that, in some cases, like completely destroys a company.

That has happened a number of times and is a thing you don't really see in the West in the same sort of way.

And Nomura specifically has become this, I think, this pretty revered figure and understandably, especially by fans of Kingdom Hearts.

But

in the PlayStation 1 era, he was pretty polarizing, I think, his character designs.

Because part of why people were hyped for Final Fantasy IX is because the characters were not designed by Tetsuya Nomura.

They were designed by,

in the style of Yoshitaka Amano, who was the character designer for the first six games.

And

it was actually done by Toshiyuki Itahana and Shuko Murase were the character designers, but they were like specifically Amano-style designs.

And it was this more fantasy, high-fantasy treatment as opposed to sort of the steampunky cyber, or I'm sorry, specifically cyberpunky/slash science fiction direction that they'd gone in with a seven and eight and would return to in 10 and beyond.

And so, yeah,

he does represent like a pivot point for the Final Fantasy franchise and for the fate of the company.

And yeah, this movie is a huge part of it.

I

was so hyped for this when it came out.

I was so hyped.

Like,

I was like, this is the movie that I wish that Spirits Within had been because it's got music by Nobu Umetsu.

Yes.

Like, it's, it's got characters that I care about and a setting that is literally Final Fantasy as opposed to like a,

and, you know, you could wrestle with whether or or not spirits within is a final fantasy type place

and there are certainly final fantasy type elements but like when i think of final fantasy i don't think of the world of spirits within i think about the world of all of these different video games um

so i went into this so hyped and like i i know i talked about the final fantasy spirits within watch as like one of these things that i wanted but was so fucking poor i could never ever hope to to purchase There is a cell phone featured prominently in this movie.

It's a flip phone that basically I think every character uses.

And I wanted that flip phone so fucking bad in 2005.

Like, I was like, this is the coolest, most futuristic-looking flip phone I've ever seen.

The Panasonic, what is it, 900 VI or something like that?

IV, I don't know.

But

even now, sometimes I'll look on eBay and it's like a hundred bucks to get one.

And I'm like, it'd be pretty cool to just have it on my desk.

You know, just like, as if cloud might call me at any time.

I keep thinking about going back to a flip phone.

And you might as well get the cloud phone from Advent Children, which I think is called Cloud Black.

Like, that's the style, like

that's the colorway of the black phone.

It's a, it does look good.

Like, I do think this is a very,

was a very cool looking movie at the time.

We certainly weren't seeing, there were CG animated movies, but we weren't seeing like CG animated movies that were like not explicitly for children, really, in the West.

And

I think because of like the other thing you were saying, Heather, is like so much backlash to Final Fantasy,

the Spirits Within, and so much of their attempts to sort of mute the franchise to have it have some sort of mainstream success, which is the thing you were seeing with adaptations of that era.

of just like, oh, let's run away from what people like about it.

You know, pre-Marvel, pre-the Raimi Spider-Mans,

before, you know, I'm trying to think of the other adaptations that like really honored the source material.

The Lord of the Rings movie is a big one.

Like before that era, when everyone was afraid of science fiction and fantasy and comic book properties and video game properties and like, well, we can't just bring this to the big screen.

We got to make it fucking generic and dumb.

The

2000 X-Men, right?

2000 X-Men is big.

Yeah, that's a big one.

Not that it's like that different, but like they're wearing like black leather.

Yes.

That's like a big, like people didn't like that.

Yes.

But yeah, but that's like kind of like in that transition phase when they were going over towards like, okay, hey, we actually are going to try to give these a budget and try to make them be like the actual IP.

So like Final Misery Spirits Within, yeah, like not having Nobuo Oematsu do the score.

They have Elliot Goldenthal do the score, who is like just like a journeyman film composer.

And it's like,

you know, it has some great credits, it worked on some great stuff, but it's not necessarily a great fit for the IP.

And yeah, it just kind of feels like generic sci-fi.

And they're going for a specifically a realistic aesthetic, which is not what they're going for with Advent Children visually.

They're trying to represent Final Fantasy VII.

And to talk a little bit about that visual quality.

Another thing you have to imagine in 2005 is that this was the most gorgeous CG you had ever seen.

Like, it was, like, Square was doing stuff with CG that I would show my friends while like America's doing Toy Story and shit.

And I'd be like, Look how real this looks.

And everyone would be like, Holy fuck.

And that was one of the things that happened with Spirits Within.

And then with this,

they took anime designs that you were used to seeing only in anime or in cutscenes and video games and giving them a little bit more like visual texture.

Like I watching this movie, I'm

fixated on the physics of Cloud's hair because like you never see like spiky hair like this done with, I think, earth physics.

So it like when he's riding in a motorcycle, his hair is kind of pushed flat on his head.

But as soon as he gets off the motorcycle or when like gravity, like if he, if he torques.

the the motorcycle and spins out then his hair springs back into those spikes and i'm like what would that that be like on a person to have hair that like

essentially responds kind of like steel wool almost?

Like you can flatten it, but it will come back.

It's really, I don't know.

Your hair, your head would have to be the shape of your hair, sort of like Bart Simpson and Lisa Simpson.

Yeah, it's cartoon logic.

Yeah, it's like the underneath the hair, the skull is that shape.

Right.

Like when they x-ray Bart and he's got a spiky skull.

It's a funny joke.

I think it's,

I think actually the character models look pretty great still.

They look fucking amazing.

Like, but for 18, 19 years later, like, you know,

I think that part actually holds up remarkably well.

Yeah.

I think in terms of visually, what's maybe aged worse is the environments.

Yes.

Which, and I don't know what's going on there.

I don't know if it's just like

they were low-res textures they were using or something, but I feel like if you see like a rock face or something, it just like it looks pretty video game-y, it looks pretty artificial.

If anything, that's what takes me out of it more than

the way the characters are moving.

And then, especially if you're seeing things in wide or if you're seeing things in aerial shots, which they're using a lot, it's like it doesn't have a sense of scale.

Like, it feels like you're looking at a model, like you're looking at something in miniature as opposed to looking at this epic Vista.

It's the part of the movie that I'm like, wow, the PlayStation 5 looks better.

Like, the environments on a PS5 game

look better than Advent Children.

I do think that there is,

specifically on clothing, there's still a higher fidelity to the way their clothes move in Advent Children.

Like, I know that like the cape physics in Fortnite are the same as the cape physics in.

Advent children, but I would say that the general, like,

I don't don't think that shirts are independently rendered on most video game models to their core frame.

And the clothes are so important in this movie that when, like, Cloud is moving in his shirt, his shirt is not

attached to the physics of his body, but have their own independent physics.

And that is also impressive still.

Yeah, that looks great.

I mean, certainly it depends on the game in terms of if the wardrobe is attached to the model or not.

But like, yeah, I agree that the clothing still looks better than anything you'd see in a game.

I don't, I think,

with a lot of the stuff that feels and looks a little dusty, it's just kind of, I wonder if, like, of this era, was this like exported at 720p or something, or like 1080p?

Like, is that like just like the final version of this?

I have no idea.

Or is there a 4K restoration of this?

There's a, you can get it on 4K disc.

There are two,

uh, there are two different

I just put up the number two and I had balloons surround me here on my Apple on my Apple Zoom.

So there are there are two different

rendering resolutions present in Advent Children Complete.

And for the new scenes, they are of a higher resolution than the old scenes and of the old scenes some of those were also exported at a lower resolution.

So there are some scenes that have the jagged edges on like a 4K monitor that they have jagged edges as if they are literally from an old video game.

And then some scenes that don't have those jagged edges that are more recently added to the film in progress, because I've also heard rumor.

that the version that's coming out in theaters this month

is going to have additional scenes to the one we've just watched.

Which is now more than two hours long.

It's more than two hours long.

When it ended, I did say out loud, that's it, no more?

It's funny because you say that, Heather,

and that's like,

I didn't know any of that in terms of the different scenes were rendered to different resolutions.

And watching it, you maybe feel it, but you maybe just think it's your connection if you're watching it on streaming, you know?

Yeah.

And so it must be a really strange experience to watch this on Blu-ray and be like, oh, wait, no, this is just sort of, you know, now

these models are aliasing because this was like whatever, exported at a different bit rate.

So I purchased this movie on Apple,

like Apple movies, right?

Started it off and it was dubbed.

And I was like, what the fuck?

I'm so fucking tired of buying a fucking movie through Apple and it only has one language track when you know that it's a dubbed film and there is no other version of it.

So I asked for a refund and then bought it on Amazon Prime where you could watch it subtitled.

Finished the movie, went out to my garage and discovered that I own it on Blu-ray.

I was like, when the fuck did I buy this?

Advent Children Complete?

When, why did I buy this?

I have no memory of purchasing this.

Which also thought

go ahead, Matt.

No, I had thought about buying the 4K disc recently, and then we decided to do this.

And I was like, oh, it's not going to come in time to watch it.

I'll just rent it.

And

I guess

I'm just glad.

I'm glad I rented it.

I'm glad I rented it.

Yeah, I mean, do we need to bury the lead here?

This movie sucks, right?

It's not like a bad movie.

What?

No, it doesn't suck.

It's weird.

It's definitely weird.

It's definitely weird.

And I also think It's bad.

No.

It's bad.

It's weird.

You know what, though?

I wonder if it sucks because

it's working against how good Final Fantasy VII is.

Right?

Like, that's a really good story.

And, like, as far as

it being, like, comprehensible, like,

I feel like it's a clearer story, even though it's, like, JRPG, like, craziness.

But this was just like, you know, it's

it opens with the coda from the end of the game, which shows you 500 years in the future.

That

best part of the movie, that cold open is great, because you're just seeing the ending of Final Fantasy VII, but like, you know, rendered in this, uh,

with a much bigger budget.

So it starts by telling you, retelling you that everything after the events of Final Fantasy VII ultimately works out, and everything's going to be fine.

And then it tells you this weird story that takes place two years afterward.

And I'm watching this and I'm like, okay, well, there aren't really any stakes here because I know it's all fine.

Like, I know already it's okay.

Well,

counterpoint, I don't mind counter-argument.

It's, you know, it starts 500 years in the future, and then go, and

as the game ends,

we don't know why

human beings seem to be dead in the far future.

And then it cuts back to two years after the game.

And you could

feel like, oh, this is going to tell me the story of why the planet is empty and Red 13 and his brethren inherit the Earth.

But instead, it does not tell you that.

No, no.

I think part of what makes the movie bad

is the translation.

I think that there is a hokiness hokiness to the trans that to the English script that isn't to my ability to translate it from Japanese that isn't present in the

Japanese original.

For example,

a perfect for me, a perfect

like an like a emblematic part of the film that describes this change for me is that when Sid

throws cloud into the sky to attack,

In the Japanese version, he just goes,

like he just like, you know, he just makes a vocal grunt.

In the English script, he says, giddy up.

And that is such a different,

like, that's hugely different.

Yeah.

Like, the, the thing that is, I think, most mimetic about this film is Dilly Dally Shilly Shally.

which is like a thing, a thing that these characters keep repeating.

And that is is the best i guess the best attempt at translating just sort of like this

which is just like a sound made by the characters like

there's a there's a bunch of moments like that like kate sith

saying like you're the chips and gravy

sucks

sucks and is not what he's saying

yuffie says at the end something like

party on, we rock or something.

I was like, what the heck?

What the heck's going on here?

And also, the second time I heard Dilly Dally Shilly Shally, I thought I was having a stroke because I couldn't believe I heard it the first time.

I heard it a second time and was like,

we got to stop.

This is tough.

I agree with you, Heather.

I don't think it's a good localization.

Sorry, please finish your point.

But I was going to say there are,

it's clear that there's a lot of,

like, in 2005, to hear the line,

you know, this is, I think, mother's mimetic legacy.

It's so funny to me how much mimetic,

mimetic blank has become like ingrained in our pop culture consciousness that in 2005, I was like, what the fuck is he talking about?

And now I'm like, oh, yeah, memetic legacy.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like a, it's, I get it, it's memes.

Okay, cool.

Mother's Mimetic Legacy?

That's right, Snake.

This is an absolutely true story.

One time I was in Japan and I had my cell phone with me, but I was

following somebody around in the city and having a good time, and then they locked me on a roof.

of a skyscraper because they were a crazy person.

That's a true story.

And my cell phone didn't have wireless access.

So this next ad is specifically something that I could have used in the past.

Because if I'd had Wi-Fi, I could have called somebody.

But instead, I had no cell phone service trapped on a roof in Tokyo.

If you've ever been lost abroad or badly needed an internet connection with no Wi-Fi spot in sight, you'll understand what a difference a local SIM card can make.

And eSIM provides an internet connection wherever you travel and saves you money on roaming fees.

That's where Saley comes in.

Saley is a new eSIM service app brought to you by the creators of NordVPN.

Here you can choose from several affordable e-SIM plans in over 190 countries and eight regions.

With a Saley eSIM, you'll always have a connection when needed.

Download Saley once and you won't have to install a new e-SIM for each country.

You can avoid scammers selling fake SIM cards outside of train stations and airports.

No more wandering around looking for a public Wi-Fi spot.

With a Saley, you're always connected.

They provide 24-7 support and you get a full refund if your device isn't e-SIM compatible.

Download the Saley app in your app store.

Use code GetPlaid at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase or go to saley.com slash getplayed.

That's S-A-I-L-Y.com slash get played.

I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Do you struggle with procrastisaving?

You know, when you put off doing something that could save you a ton.

I used to be a huge procrastaver until I heard about Mint Mobile's best deal of the year that's ending soon, 50% off unlimited premium wireless for new customers.

Let me tell you how I procrastisaved.

I would reuse toilet paper.

Stop overspending with big wireless and cut your wireless bill to $15 a month when you switch.

All Mint Mobile plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network.

You can use your current phone and phone number on any Mint Mobile plan and bring along all your existing contacts.

Don't miss out on three months of unlimited premium wireless from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month.

But hurry because this deal ends September 22nd.

Look, cell phones are cell phones.

What are we talking about?

Your wireless carrier isn't, it's all the f ⁇ ing same, man.

Am I allowed to say f ⁇ during an ad?

Well, I just did.

And I told you I would reuse toilet paper paper to save money think about how much you could be saving with mint mobile quit stalling and start saving when you make the switch shop plans at mintmobile.com slash get played that's mintmobile.com slash get paid upfront payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan taxes and fees extra see mint mobile for details

It's a, it's, it's a, yes.

Okay, I agree with you.

It's a bad localization.

The dialogue is very hokey and corny, though I will say,

having played Final Fantasy games since the 8-bit era and having played

a lot of not well-translated JRPGs, to me, the corniness, the hokeiness is kind of baked in.

I kind of expect that with the dialogue.

So it's not a,

there are parts that are eye rolly and kind of cringy, but, you know, Barrett saying alley oop at an inappropriate time does not like completely throw me out of it.

I don't think the script problems are with the dialogue.

I think it's structural, where this movie, even as someone who understands Final Fantasy VII, who has played the game

and knows the world and knows the characters well, is still pretty inscrutable and still pretty hard to understand just what the fuck is going on.

Like it feels like you're watching an MCU movie where you didn't do the homework, you know, and you're just like,

who is that?

Are they the, are, wait, what's going on?

You know, and, and, and like, yeah, I was sorry, I didn't budget 16 hours to watch Moon Knight and WandaVision, so I'm kind of lost when I'm watching the second Doctor Strange movie, you know, but I mean, like, it's like, that's what it feels like, even as someone who knows this and is rooting for it and wants it to succeed.

Can't imagine watching this.

Watching this.

Watching this cold would be so insane.

Well, because there's an endgame moment where, yeah, and Heather was talking about Sid.

Sid shows up.

Euffie shows up.

Vincent Valentine shows up.

Kate Sith, Barret, Red 13, who we've seen in the open, they all show up to help out.

And it's like, and there's a question of, there's a character who asks Tifa, like, who are they?

Just, and it's like, okay, well, you're, you're the audience surrogate.

You're asking for context for who this, these half dozen people who just showed up in the middle of action sequence are, are.

And Tifa just goes like, they're the team.

Just like, wait, okay, you clarify nothing.

What?

She might as well have been like, who cares, you idiot?

I have, I just remembered.

I just remembered that I have the Final Fantasy VII novel that just recently came out.

And I'm trying to.

Yeah.

Two, yeah, of two voices or two paths or some shit.

Like, I have that somewhere on my shelf, and I

probably won't read it.

But if I, if I need to spend like a couple hours at a coffee shop and I'm in between books, maybe I'll bring it with because maybe it'll illuminate what the remnants are and what their relationship to Sephiroth is that isn't quite illuminated in this

in this movie.

Yeah, I mean, one thing is,

I do want to say one thing that is illuminated in this movie that I love, which is Tifa says,

remember two years ago when we all fought fought Sephiroth together and we were so strong?

And I'm like, oh, cool.

That's like an internal,

an internal rationalization of leveling up.

And then she's like, we're not that strong anymore.

So we couldn't do it.

Which to me means if you're not actively involved in battling in the world of Final Fantasy VII, you begin to de-level, which

could explain

how I assume the next Final Fantasy VII remake game is going to work because you can't just you can't just take every power

from the previous game and drop it into the new one because the power creep would be too absurd.

They're going to have to start you at a smaller level with a smaller like magic base, et cetera, in order to make the sense of progression greater.

And now I can like head cannon that as, oh, they took a small break and deleveled.

Yeah, you got to figure out how to reset the skill tree somehow.

Star Wars Jedi survivor would argue that you can do that actually that you can start pretty much with all the powers you had from the previous game and then actually you're gonna get some new ones didn't spider-man 2 kind of do that i didn't play it but yeah i think it does a similar thing too yeah and it seems like uh from the little bit of psychonauts 2 that i played that you kind of start with basically everything you had at the end of psychonauts as well yeah but i think they've got that like games are

i think they're figuring out with sequels that people that people don't want to redo the TDM of the previous game in terms of acquiring everything.

So they're figuring out how to shortcut the little bit.

But yeah, no one's solved it.

And I don't know how they're going to do it in Rebirth.

There's a bit of IMDb trivia, which I copy-pasted here just because I think it's very funny to read

in the context of watching this film.

The creators of this film had no prior knowledge of how to make a movie.

Okay, so actually, you know what?

They did a really good job.

They did a basic job.

This is like, this is in theory watching somebody's infinite budget student film.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which also is part of why.

So, you say it's bad.

I find that it's too weird to be bad.

Like, it is sure, it is so strange,

and the action sequences are so incredible.

Like,

the

the moves that the team is doing with the camera in this film, I think are

new moves with action sequences in 2005.

Looks awesome.

And I think that a lot of the like, like

it's sort of the next beat after the Matrix in terms of like, okay, if you can untether the camera from reality and move it anywhere you want during an action sequence, and you never have to cut.

Like, you'll zoom all the way into like Cloud's foot on his motorcycle before you pull all the way out to reveal the wide shot of him jumping off the motorcycle.

And then you'll zoom all the way back into him in the air on his face and then whip the camera around to see who it is he's attacking.

And I don't think that shit was being done in 2005, whereas now it's everywhere.

Like, that's literally what we see in Spider-Man and all of these movies.

But in 2005, people were still like,

okay, you cut from this guy to that guy and you cut from that guy to his gun.

And none of those cuts are present in this film, which is part of what makes it weird and compelling.

No, I love that the...

Look, I love how a lot of the action sequences work.

Like the motorcycle sword fight you're just talking about, that looks awesome.

Cloud delivering the Omnislash looks really cool.

It's, and, and what you were just talking about, which is how the camera never stops moving.

Like, that's part of what's compelling visually about this and something that's been imitated

in live action.

And you contrast that with like, yeah, a lot of modern action movies are pre-visualized to hell and they have the same sort of frenetic feel to them,

but they also just like kind of seem goopy and inert.

No, this one has like, it, it has actual visual flair to it.

So, from that standpoint, yes, it that all works.

And the second half of that IMBB trivia thing is, uh, because they had no prior knowledge, it was based on their knowledge of in-game movies, and that's what kind of watching this kind of feels like.

It's like

these are really, really high-budget video game cinematics, but what you're missing is the chunks of gameplay that kind of, you know, let you let that all sort of breathe and also kind of uh help center what you're actually doing and and what the goal of this

uh this uh this exercise is like who's good who's bad what the stakes are like a lot of that is all communicated via gameplay segments that are just absent here and as such it feels like you know here's a two-hour youtube video of all the cinematics from an unreleased final fantasy game um and and and i think part of that is that that it never like lets you breathe it's just kind of this unrelenting barrage of action.

Have you guys seen Kingsglaive?

No,

never watched that.

No, Heather.

No.

Have I seen Kingsglaive?

I've never even seen this.

You think I'm going to pop on a fucking Final Fantasy movie for a Final Fantasy game I haven't played?

That was the matter with you.

Oh,

I've never been mad at you before.

I'm furious.

Well,

Kingsglave is, I believe, a more comprehensible version of Advent Children because it's a prequel, so it doesn't come with any prior knowledge.

Like, you enter the film and you are told everything.

And then the action sequences are so fucking, like, they're so ice cold.

They are so good because everybody

in this world has Noctis's ability to throw a weapon and then teleport to where the weapon is.

So the sequences are really, really fantastic.

God damn it, Matt.

That was so fucking funny.

I've seen Kingsclave has 12% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Will they ever do this correctly?

I lost my, I lost the point I was trying to make because you made me laugh so much.

It looks like it looks great.

It looks amazing.

It's also funny because, like,

it's the second time that they have basically just used Ben Affleck's face without hiring him.

Because they use Ben Affleck's face or in Spirits Within.

It's like, oh, that guy looks like Ben Affleck.

And then, like, NYX, I think his name is.

NYX looks so much like Ben Affleck, and he's voiced in America by Aaron Paul.

So, like, that also fucks with your brain.

Uh, because you're like, it sounds like Aaron Paul, but looks like Ben Affleck.

Yeah.

Give me the materia, bitch.

What I'll say about this is,

first off, it's intro.

Like, I love that it exists.

Even though I'm not a fan of the movie, I do love that it exists.

It's just, yes, to what you're saying, Heather, whether you like it or dislike it, it is inarguably weird and unique and from an era when the leeway was given to just make this crazy thing it also is from an era where i feel like they were giving video game creators a little bit more control over their filmic adaptations which was an interesting kind of like over correction to things like the Super Mario Bros.

movie, right?

I don't know if this is exactly what happened, but if something like that, it's like, this is completely out of Nintendo's hands.

We just have the rights to this thing, and we're gonna give this to two, like

a team, a director team that is going to make something completely bizarre and completely removed from the source material.

And you know, then they start to be more like, and not that Spirits Within is super close to Final Fantasy, but it is a thing where, like, Hirunobu Sakaguchi is directing that movie, Tetsuya Nomura is directing this movie, there's the Wing Commander movie, which sucks, but is written and directed by Chris Roberts, who created the Wing Commander video game franchise.

There was this sort of brief period where they were kind of like, you know what?

Maybe the best person to reinterpret this in a different medium is the person who made this game.

But, you know, it turns out that making a movie and making a game are very different things.

And honestly, I do think that kind of comes across in Uematsu's score.

Nobuo Uematsu, greatest video game composer of all time.

I mean,

I would probably say so.

I'm a huge fan of his.

I don't think this is a great score for this movie.

Yeah.

So

here's

a little trivia about the score, which is that it isn't,

it's not for the movie.

So Final Fantasy VII piano collections predates Final Fantasy VII Advent Children.

And the piano collections are piano interpretations of the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack.

The fight sequence between Tifa and Punching Guy in Aeritha's Church uses, just directly drops in a track from that album,

which is the piano version of the Final Fantasy VII battle theme.

And it just trails off in the movie because there's not enough time to use the entire piano piece.

And

though the score is composed by Nobuo Ometsu, a lot of these are repurposed songs from other places, like

the Final Fantasy VII orchestral album, or I think one of them might be from the Black Mages, which is Nobu Ometsu's rock band.

So it's not a score for the movie.

It is Final Fantasy VII music.

often from other places dropped into these sequences.

And that's why I think it doesn't work.

That makes a lot of sense.

They're basically just using his, just repurposing his existing music.

Because you can pick out tracks, like, you know, you can be like, oh, that's Genova, you know, that's One Winged Angel, you know, like those, those kind of hits.

But yeah, if he wasn't composing any music specifically timed to the action on screen, I mean, that's what it feels like.

It feels like it's just sort of, these are just sort of background tracks.

Like, like the whole thing is uses temp scoring.

Yeah, the

way that the Sephiroth's Pete, One Wing angel can go anywhere.

Of course, yeah.

I've said that before on the show.

As soon as those notes hit,

and it sounds like, is it Mars?

Is that the one that it borrows from?

It's

yeah.

You're like, uh-oh.

Oh, no, it's this guy.

And the iconography of Sephiroth is so strong that it worked, like, for like his arrival in

Smash Brothers is echoes of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children, which is echoes of the game.

Like, in terms of the visual positioning of him on screen, like him impaling somebody on his long sword, like all of those things.

They look fantastic.

And it's also

like he's more iconic than Cloud.

I think that like Sephiroth as a character, you could like

imitate more than you can imitate Cloud.

Like, I don't know, like, what's a thing Cloud would say, but I do know that, like, things that Sephiroth might say, like, you know, tell me your, your, your greatest thing and let me take it from you.

I want to bathe you in despair.

Like, you'd be like, oh, that sounds like

yeah, like that, all that shit sounds like Sephiroth, but I don't know what Cloud sounds like.

No, that's fair.

He's kind of a, he's kind of, he's kind of a pretty plain protagonist, although his, his character design is obviously so striking and so iconic.

Yes.

Yes.

So that's, that's fair.

He's plain because you play as.

Yeah, because he's a player character.

That's often the case.

Yeah.

If Trump made one winged angel his campaign theme, he'd like win 46 states.

Oh my God.

Can you imagine him walking on stage of that?

I wouldn't vote for him, but I would go to a rally.

I'd want to see it.

There's a bunch of people cheering and one person dancing?

Like, remember when he came out as a villain at the Republican National Convention when he got the nomination in 2016?

Like, and he was like, no, that fucking, like, I should be bathed from light in the back and covered in smoke and appear as a shadow.

Like he's the Undertaker.

Yeah.

Fuck.

Oh, man.

I also want to say it is, I think

it sort of speaks to the misplaced priorities of this team in general that one of the things they do for Advent Children Complete is add dirt to faces.

Like it's one of their like major focuses is like, oh, as they fight, their faces should get dirty.

So, if you watch the DVD version, their faces are all clean throughout and they kind of look like action figures.

And in this version, it's like, yeah, he should have like a cut on his face after this fight.

The other thing is, uh, and this is separate as a separate thought.

I'm just kind of like looking at my notes.

Um,

the sound of swords in this game is in this movie is very weird.

It's not the sound of swords that we've become accustomed to, the big, heavy steel clang of swords.

These swords hit each other and sound like very high-pitched ringing bells.

Like they're so high-pitched when they strike one another that it almost sounds like

somebody hitting pieces of like aluminum, like sliding aluminum against itself.

Like they're not...

They're not, they don't sound heavy.

Even Cloud's sword, which is the size of a parked car doesn't hit with like a big

you know

resonant bass hit it's like ting ting ting it's very weird um and the last thing that i want to add from my notes is that i just wrote cloud is baptizing children exclamation point

because yeah which happens at the end of the plot of this movie yes right because like the central plot of the movie, well, there's a couple things going on, but one of the main things is there's like a disease that's taking over

the world that's fallout from the end of the game, basically, where now there's this disease that you can just get.

And the disease

is geostigma.

Yeah, geostigma is, it's not an internal disease, it is external, and you have like a gooey thing on you.

Yeah.

Kind of smudges you up.

But it's, but it's like the planet fighting back against the the scourge of humanity yes pretty much yeah pretty just directly it's that um it's it's the covet 19 of the of midgar yeah

the planet basically being like leave it honestly if i got geostigma i'd be like you know what good

i'm not trying to fix this my lifetime carbon footprint probably i deserve this yeah

um

i i will just say that for that's a great point about the sound design because yes it does feel

just a little tinny and weird.

And I guess the I guess the PlayStation games, also the PS1 games, certainly did not have great sound effects.

Like that's not the high point from an audio standpoint of

those games.

Those were all kind of like, it felt like from an earlier generation.

So I don't know, maybe it's byproduct of that.

Who knows?

But the sound of like Cloud hitting something with his weapon in the original game is like, whoosh!

Like it's still like a like a

sound that you associate with a strike.

The sounds in this movie for weapon strikes are just confounding.

Like it is such a strange quality.

It's, I

don't love this movie, but I certainly like it.

And it's, I don't think I would like it if it was more typically

familiar as a film in like the structure of it or like any of the choices made, I think I would like it less if it were better because I think there's like a, you know, like a bell curve of like where this movie falls is really far to the left, so much so that it is interesting.

Whereas like if it was

like the first Resident Evil movie was okay,

but I like it less than this because it is a little bit more like a movie.

Does that make sense?

It makes total sense.

Yeah, the Paul W.O.

Sanderson Resident Evil is a lot more coherent as a narrative film.

But it's not interesting the same way this is.

Yeah, I don't like this movie, but I do think there's a place for this movie, like being on mute in the background.

and just occasionally like looking at like, oh, look at that thing, you know, like it does have some stuff that like looks cool.

And again, I'm glad that it exists.

But it definitely this watch gave me appreciation for

when you see like a really well-structured action movie like Top Gun Maverick, and they've got effectively a PowerPoint presentation where they're like, Here is the mission.

We are the good guys, these are the bad guys, these are the parameters that define success and failure.

If we do these things in sequence, we win the movie.

So that when you're watching that in the third act, you understand exactly what's going on.

And this movie could not be more the complete opposite of that.

Where characters are like,

they begin by calling a character that you know their brother, and then they're asking if he knows where their mother is, and you've never met these guys.

Yeah.

And at some point in the film, other characters are like, What are you talking about when you say mother?

Like what?

Somebody actually like straight up asks them, what are you talking about?

Which is what the audience has felt as soon as they're introduced.

Yeah.

And then they're, it's like, oh, it's, it's Genova.

Uh, it's, that's who, that's our mom.

And then they show you Genova.

They show you a flashback of the game's like present, like Genova as we know Genova, like a big thing in a tank with a metal face.

And

when then later they find Genova, it is not that.

It is in a box that's like a cigar box and we never see inside that box.

Like,

it's, they don't even have like a consistent like,

this is the thing.

We're looking for that thing.

We found the thing.

Uh-oh.

Instead, it's like, we're looking for the thing.

Turns out the thing has been being held by a guy next to us this entire time.

It is much smaller now and it's in a box.

And this guy who has seen these characters jump off buildings and fly through doorways and shit thinks that the best way to destroy the thing that the bad guys are looking for is by tossing it off the side of a building.

Which, by the way,

the craziest thing that Cloud does in this film, like in terms of movement,

is implied in that sequence because he, is it Bahamut that he's fighting?

Is it like Shin Bahamut or some shit?

Right?

He's fighting that summon.

Big summon.

He fights the summon, wins that battle.

Simultaneously, Rufus

across town throws

Genova's remnant off the side of a building, and then is hit off the side of the building by the bad guy who then, or jumps, I don't remember.

And then Kadaj, the bad guy, jumps off with him.

So we have established Cloud is on top of a skyscraper scaffolding across town.

Then you cut to him on his motorcycle.

Then you cut to him racing across town.

So Cloud gets down

from a skyscraper onto his motorcycle, starts the motorcycle, and drives across town before either of those characters can hit the ground.

So he is moving faster than the speed of gravity in this moment.

And it is theoretically the craziest thing he does in the entire film.

Yeah,

it's full of just complete physical nonsense.

But that's, to me, not even the problem with the movie.

No.

But also, like, I mean, we talked about the action sequence, like, the sequences.

Like, the big final action sequence where he's fighting that big summon.

It looks cool.

It looks cool.

It's so long.

It's so long.

It's like.

I could not believe it was still going on.

Like, it was, it felt, it felt too long.

And also, like,

I don't know, the Spirits Within also had this problem where, like,

and I know that, like, there's not a lot of color in the world of Final Fantasy VII.

This movie's very gray.

And I was sort of like, I don't, there's not a lot for me to look at here, like, in terms of, like,

clouds, the characters stand out because everything else is kind of.

you know, dystopian and whatnot, but I was sort of like kind of bored looking at it.

I think that's part of of why the environments don't look as great because they just look like you're just looking at mounds of earth or you're just looking at piles of rubble.

It's all very gray and brown.

It's all very, you know, PC corridor shooter of the late 90s, early 2000s, that sort of palette.

And like, yeah, it's,

yeah, they're probably,

these games aren't boring to look at.

So, and the environments aren't all boring.

So, yeah, they probably could have done some more to jazz that up a little bit.

But

I don't know, on balance, a fascinating thing to revisit on the eve of the release of the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII franchise.

Yeah.

I think it's good.

I think it's good because watching it again lowered my expectations for the game.

Like,

there's now room for me to be impressed.

Whereas before, I was coming in to part two pretty, like at a high level of expectation.

And now I'm like, oh, right, it's these, these guys made this also so there's a possibility I'll be frustrated Final Fantasy VII could also be this like

it's a lot of things it could be really great but it could also be advent children and isn't that something Rochelle where are you on Final Fantasy are you a fan of the franchise I've never played Final Fantasy before.

Wow, have you seen any of the Final Fantasy movies?

No.

Oh, so you're just, it's just completely foreign to you.

Completely foreign.

The only thing I know about Final Fantasy is through my boyfriend playing Kingdom Kingdom Hearts.

Right, right.

So, you like, but you know characters like Cloud and Sephiroth, at least.

Yeah.

Okay, got it.

That's is that pretty much where your knowledge ends?

That's where it ends.

I know what they look like.

Yeah.

I have a general idea of who's who, but that's about it.

We should have made you watch this movie.

Clockwork Orange style.

Rochelle quit.

It's not even that bad.

Like, if you were forced to watch it, you'd sort of be like, this sucks, but it's fine.

Like,

it's not like it's like the worst movie I've ever seen.

It is better than,

it sounds insane to say this, too.

Like, it's better than Spirits Within, but that's such a low bar to clear.

I think it could be better than Spirits Within with a single moment that Vincent does.

So Vincent is a vampire from Final Fantasy VII.

And he's very, very melodramatic.

He's not like vampire-ish in this in this movie, but he's he's vampire adjacent.

And Cloud asks him if he has a cell phone, and he goes like he like gestures with his cape, like he flips his cape up to show that he doesn't have a cell phone.

Yeah.

You see one on my fucking belt, bitch?

No, that rocks.

It's fucking like, that's how a vampire would be like, I don't carry a fucking cell phone.

And then the next time you see that character, he is entering the city striding through chaos.

And he says, he says in his whispery voice, where can I buy a cell phone?

That's it.

Made me laugh.

It is really funny.

And you know, the moments that work really do work.

Like, it's not like it wouldn't work if you were watching it cold, but we talked about when the team shows up.

Yeah.

I was excited to see all my friends.

That was very exciting to me.

Yes.

And they weren't in it enough.

But there's like so many characters.

I can see why you couldn't put all of them, especially since the original run

was not two hours.

Yeah, no.

It's not.

It's 100 minutes.

I also, I missed the post-credit sequence, which apparently there is.

And I didn't see it.

I didn't watch it, and I don't think I'll be going back to see it, actually.

I did watch the post-credit sequence.

I don't think it's essential, but what it is, is...

There's a shot of flowers overlooking Midgar.

And the dialogue is, it's from characters off-camera.

They They go, Is that somebody's grave?

And the response is, no, that's where a hero began his journey.

And now that's supposed to be coming from Red 13 and his kids or what,

or the descendants of Red 13.

But yeah, that's what the dialogue is.

Wow.

I mean, that sounds good.

It's kind of cool.

I like that.

I don't mind the line.

It is kind of a bummer.

You don't usually see like a game,

like the future of the game, like

500 years ahead, it kind of sucks to know that like Cloud dies at some point.

Well, yeah, he's mortal.

Yeah, it kind of

really think about it.

Like, I don't, I don't know, it just kind of sucks.

Yeah,

I do, I do like the flash forward in the ending.

Something you just said, Matt, made me realize something about this movie because you were like, oh, that sounds cool.

And neither of us have seen that thing.

And I'm like, I agree.

It sounds cool.

And the truth is, I think this movie really functions if you tell somebody else about it yeah right 100 yeah you're like oh these guys they are they're racing down a highway and they're all on motorcycles and they keep leaping from motorcycle to motorcycle to attack each other some of them use guns and some of them use swords and at one point one of the sword guys cuts a motorcycle in half Like that sound, like I can imagine somebody pitching that scene and everybody being like, yeah, yeah, that's great.

That's great.

Or it's like

the woman who has been, who has been swallowed by the earth, she comes back in in the climax of a, of, a very important battle and she re she re-emerges as rain.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, and then bathes this virus off of our protagonist and purifies him.

And you'd be like, fuck,

yes.

But while you're watching that, you're like, wait, what is happening?

Yeah.

Right.

That character is named Rude.

Got it.

Yeah.

Rude gets upset.

Rude gets upset because the bad guy steps on his favorite sunglasses, and after a moment of looking sad, he takes out another pair of sunglasses and puts them on.

It's great, but in the moment,

it's not played very well comedically.

No.

Like, it's kind of cut away in weird ways.

Like, kind of lose track of the joke.

All right, this episode releases on the U.S.

holiday, President's Day.

Yes.

Yes.

My favorite holiday.

We celebrate our favorite war criminals and sex pests.

My favorite slave holidays.

The oldest men on earth.

So, as such, because it's President's Day, I've got a topical quiz.

I will name a video game president, and you name the video game franchise for one point and bonus point if you can name the correct entry in that franchise if there's more than one game in a series.

So I'll name the president.

You match it to the franchise.

Make sense?

Yeah, that rocks.

And then feel free to ask for hints as we go because some of these are hard.

Okay, first up.

This one should be something of an alley oop, as Barrett would say.

President Bridget Strand.

Matt.

Matt.

That's from Death Stranding, of course.

Matt, you are correct.

And there's no bonus point because there's just one game as of yet.

Matt gets that one.

Next up,

there's another game we've covered.

President George Sears.

So far, these names have sounded like that Ken Griffey baseball roster.

Sleeve McDaniel.

Todd Bonitez.

Gosh, President George Sears.

President George Sears, you know this one.

President Sears.

This is a big franchise.

We've covered two games of the franchise.

What?

You've covered two games in the franchise?

Two games in the franchise.

George Sears.

Yeah.

Like Sears.

He hasn't.

Roebuck.

It is spelled exactly like Sears Roebuck.

He has an alias.

Oh,

is it Metal Gear?

Matt, it is Metal Gear.

You get a point.

Do you want to guess which Metal Gear franchise George Sears is most known for?

Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty.

That's right.

He is aka Solid as Snake.

Yes.

You fight the president as the final boss of Metal Gear Solid 2.

You fucking know what you're doing.

You fight and kill him.

Video games rock.

All right, next one.

This is not a franchise we've covered on the show.

This is a major video game franchise.

I think you've played this game, Heather.

Matt, I'm not sure if you've played this game, but I'm not sure if you've played this game, Heather.

So

that may not be helpful guidance.

The president's name is President John Henry Eden.

Oh.

Heather.

Heather.

Is it like

Time Crisis?

No, it's not Time Crisis.

It's a bigger franchise than that, and it is a...

It is a Western developer.

I'm going to take a wild swing.

Yeah.

Is it

Splinter Cell?

It's not Splinter Cell.

Okay.

I was thinking of Eden because of the Eden Corporation from

Captain Laser Hawk.

No, I get your logic, and it is sound, but no, this is the president.

This is the AI president, the reveal in Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 is the game.

All right, next up, President G.

Wait.

Heather.

Yes.

House of the Dead?

It's not a House of the Dead.

God damn it.

G is a character in that game, though.

Yeah.

No,

this is a, then to be clear, this is the world president.

The world president of the world.

The world president of the world

goes by the letter G.

This is a huge, this is a huge franchise, one of the biggest franchises.

It is a Japanese video game franchise, Heather.

Fuck.

Feel free to ask if you want to direct any hints.

Yeah, can we get a, but I'd see

you want like a specific hint?

Well, yeah, if you want to ask what kind of game it is or something, or who the developer is, or whatever, we can try to steer you a little bit.

What kind of game is it?

So there's a fighting game franchise.

Oh, is it

Street Fighter?

Is there a president?

It is Street Fighter.

Either of you want to guess the franchise entry for a bonus point.

I'd like to guess the franchise entry.

Yeah.

Six.

It's not six.

Oh, well.

Is it four?

It's five.

Wow.

President G is a presence in final and Street Fighter V, which I think is the two of you have played the least, which is probably explains why it maybe exited your brain.

All right, next one.

We have covered multiple games.

Oh, well, we all like Street Fighter VI.

Yeah, it was great.

No, yeah, but I think five is the one that's over the dark horse.

Yeah.

But it did include President G,

who looks like Link, well, a buff Lincoln and is six foot seven.

Okay, maybe Street Fighter V is good.

All right, this one, we have covered this franchise extensively.

This is a huge video game franchise.

And the president in this is the president of the United Federation.

The unnamed president of the United Federation.

We've covered this franchise.

We've covered, I believe, three games that include this character, at least two.

I don't fucking know these, these, I don't know these.

I'm shocked you don't know the name of who the president of the United Federation is.

For me just saying it.

I think you'd get it instantly.

United Federation.

Like, part of me wants to guess Gundam because it's, but we haven't covered any Gundam stuff.

This is a Japanese, this is a Japanese franchise.

Japanese developed franchise for the most part.

This is a huge franchise, and this is a franchise that is known for sometimes taking its story a little too weirdly seriously in a way that's a little bit cringe, a little bit embarrassing.

Uh, Heather.

Yes.

Devil May Cry.

Not Devil May Cry.

It's a mascot game.

Oh.

Shit, can I ring in again?

Yeah, take another crack at it.

Sonic the Hedgehog.

It is Sonic the Hedgehog.

Can you guess one of three

Sonic games where

Sonic the Hedgehog President is involved?

Sonic Adventure 2.

You are correct.

It is Sonic Adventure 2.

Want to guess the other ones?

Anyone?

No.

No.

I mean, he's got to be an 06.

He is in 06.

Is he in shadow?

He is in shadow.

Yeah.

He's in all three games.

We have done a lot of Sonic.

One of the Sonic games, Shadow the Hedgehog, the ending of Shadow the Hedgehog, the President says, says:

This planet was once safe from tyranny, annihilation, and annihilation by you two heroes.

Now, mankind must protect the peace at all costs.

We must stand united to defend our world against these invaders.

It's from fucking Sonic the Hedgehog.

What are we doing?

Okay,

Matt has three, Heather has two.

Next up:

President Ronnie,

President Ronnie.

Matt is having an asthma attack.

Oh, man.

Matt, you may be too young for this game.

This was an arcade brawler that was ported to home consoles in the 80s.

Oh, shit.

It's a beat-em-up game.

Heather.

Got a really dumb title.

Go for it, Heather.

Oh, no.

Oh, man.

There goes my guess.

I don't know.

I was going to guess Double Dragon.

It's not Double Dragon, but it's very close to Double Dragon.

It's exactly that kind of game.

It's not Streets of Rage.

It's not Streets of rage no it's final this is dumber than streets of rage it's not final fight no the game we're looking for is bad dudes

this is a really funny bad dudes bad dudes rocks uh the the start of the beginning of bad dudes is president ronnie has been kidnapped by the ninjas are you a bad enough dude to rescue ronnie so that's how the game starts And then at the end, the credit, the reward you get for finishing this game is President Ronnie, I'll show this to you.

I'll show this to you here in a second, Matt.

Hey, dudes, thanks for rescuing me.

Let's go for a burger.

Ha ha ha ha.

Is it supposed to be like Ronald Reagan?

It's 100% supposed to be Ronald Reagan.

Speaking of which, no one gets a point there.

Speaking of which, President Ronald Reagan is in which video game franchise?

In Call of Duty.

In Call of Duty.

You're correct.

It is Call of Duty.

Do you know which Call of Duty?

I don't remember how they titled this one.

because it's not Modern Warfare, and it's not no, it's not a Modern Warfare, um,

it's it's Call of Duty, and it's a year, and I can't pull the year because I don't know anything about world history.

I thought Ronald Reagan was made up,

I didn't even know he was real.

It's not a year, uh, Heather, do you want to take a guess at this very dumb subtitle?

I got it, Matt's got it.

Uh,

Call of Duty Cold War, right?

No, I'll give it to you.

It's Black Ops Cold War is the

full title.

All right, I'll give you some full.

Yeah.

All right, you've got five.

Heather's got two.

A few more here.

You play as Hinkley in one of the

minigames.

He's the hero.

There's a lot of presidents in video games, but there aren't very many First Ladies, although in one of them, you can play as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

first lady eleanor roosevelt is it playable in what game this is a this is a 4x strategy franchise this is a grand strategy game oh my god um

one of the biggest of the of them very well known

it's like settlers of catan or some shit

not settlers of catan is it this is a this is a game this is a a uh designed for uh for pc

and it's like um

it's like an XCOM?

Yeah, I mean,

it's grander than that.

It's just tactical.

It's a little bit more.

This is like a explore, expand, conquest sort of game.

Is it civilization?

It is civilization.

It's Sid Meier's Civilization.

Do you want to guess which civilization Eleanor Roosevelt is a playable leader?

Take a guess.

Could it be Civ 6?

Not Civ 6.

I figured not.

That was the most recent one.

Heather, want to guess?

No, I have no idea.

It was Civilization 2.

Wow.

They had male and female leaders for each civilization, and for America, they picked a first lady.

That was the option.

Okay, next one.

Another real historical figure.

President Bill Clinton.

This is a game we've covered.

We've covered it, and he's in it?

With this game we've covered, and a game we've covered pretty recently.

No, I don't know these.

Heather was not here for this episode.

Oh, great.

So I'm a double disadvantage.

What?

You expect me to listen to the show when I'm not on it?

I absolutely don't.

And yet I'm cursed.

Gosh, I can't even remember what we did last month.

President,

President Bill Clinton is an unlockable character in NBA Jam.

Oh.

Oh,

wow.

Yeah.

Do you remember when they were doing that?

They put like Clinton in an NBA jam and then he was in Ready to Rumble boxing.

There was like a period where they were just like, oh, it's fun.

Let's throw Clinton in there.

That's me.

He's a fun guy.

Yeah.

All right.

Last one.

I ran out of blue dresses.

Give me that basketball.

Jesus.

Last one.

Matt's going to win this, but we'll do one more for completion's sake.

You maybe won't recognize the president's name, but I think the game is known as a big president game.

President Michael Wilson.

I don't know.

Has there ever been a President Michael?

Let's see.

Too silly of a name, I think.

Was there a Maya?

I'm having trouble thinking of scrolling through presidential first names.

Mike Pence is the closest we got.

Mike Pence.

Michael Dukakis was a runner-up.

Yeah, I don't know.

Is it Resident Evil 4?

Not Resident Evil 4.

No.

Good guess.

President game.

I don't know.

I just.

you maybe the game you maybe know by reputation, although it was not a huge seller.

It is, I think, a pretty

memed game.

The game is called Metal Wolf Chaos.

We're showing all the videos.

Oh.

This final hope of being the U.S.

president

in a fucking mech.

The president in a mech.

Just absolutely wrecking house.

Honestly, they should do this.

They should do this.

Just give Biden a Gundam.

Let's just see what happens.

Yeah.

He'll fall asleep in there.

Honestly, war should be

a president and another opposing world leader.

One gun each, one bullet sorted out.

Give him mechs for the fun of it.

Yeah, give him a mechs.

Yeah, I'm just thinking, I'm seeing the destruction here.

I just, you know, let's see who takes out who, call it a day.

Without sending the fucking

the poor.

Nothing is pointless.

And the reason is because I'm the president of the great United States of America.

All right.

We're good.

Wow.

Actually, never mind.

Mech's all the way.

We should cover that at some point.

My head hurts.

We should add

absolutely cover it.

It's supposed to be amazingly fun.

That's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Yard underscore underscore sard.

Going to give Rochelle a follow.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And also, check out our Patreon show, Get Animated.

Matt, what are we watching this week?

We're watching episode seven of Pluto on Netflix.

And boy, oh boy, things are heating up, wouldn't you say, Heather?

I would say that.

Heating up like a pot of water on the lowest temperature.

But we'd have fun talking about it, and you can listen along along with our entire pre-head gum back catalog of get played episodes.

That's only at patreon.com slash get played.

And

hmm.

What happened to us this week?

I don't know.

We didn't get played, did we?

We got freaking geostigma'd.

Not going to wash off.

Oh, God.

Covered in geostigma.

You guys are, that's not geostigma.

The thing that you're covered in, it's not geostigma.

God.

That was a hit gum podcast.

Wherever you go,

whatever they get into,

from chill time to everyday adventures, protect your dog from parasites with Credelio Quattro.

For full safety information, side effects, and warnings, visit Credelio Quattrolabel.com.

Consult your vet or call 1-888-545-5973.

Ask your vet for Credelio Quattro and visit QuattroDog.com.