We Play, You Play: Dredge with Oscar Montoya

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Well, well, well,

if it isn't two new fishermen come in from the town,

and here I am,

the collector.

Yes, Collector, you're quite isolated here on this otherwise deserted island with your manner, but we hear that you can give us some clarity, some clues as to the reality that we live in.

We fulfill some tasks for you.

Yeah, we're open to anything, yeah.

Of course.

I understand that it is a mysterious time, but if you can present me with five relics, then I can provide you the answers you seek.

First, head into the town of Little Merrow and go to the bar on the cliffside.

Okay.

See if you can find

a very mysterious wallet.

It's a fold-over wallet, brown on the outside.

So is it like an ancient sort of like...

No.

And this is a mariner who was marooned centuries ago?

This is a wallet from about a year and a half ago, slightly worn.

And behind the bar will be an open tab.

Pay for the tab,

sign the bill,

and then bring me the wallet.

Whose uh sorry, just to whose name is the will the tab be under so I know which one to do?

Second, the second is it your name?

Because I'm thinking it's your name.

Second relic is somewhere in between the bars and the dock.

The bar and the dock.

Okay, that's quite a lot of ring.

A ring of keys.

Three keys.

A front door key, a bicycle key, and another key that's for a...

It's a storage locker at the post office.

Okay.

See if you can track down those keys.

I just want to clarify, these are like ancient relics.

Yeah, these are like

keys.

I'm detecting a pattern here.

Nick, I I don't know if you're also picking up on this.

Yeah,

if you're talking about the war.

I mean, to be honest, I clocked that.

This was his stuff immediately.

Once you said wallet, I just be like, this is probably just his wallet.

And then, yeah, the more details.

What about a mysterious pocket watch frozen in time?

Okay, here we go.

Telling the time when it was perhaps dropped in between the bar and the docks.

Okay, so it is just still one of one of his things.

And yeah, it sounds like if I'm piecing this night together, he had he

you tied one on, it sounds like, and I guess threw your stuff all over the place.

What do you even do at the 24-hour fitness?

Because you're in rough shape.

All right, so you look at it.

So if you have all the answers, then perhaps you don't even need you don't need to find any relics.

Maybe maybe you you're too good for it.

No, I know I need to I need to understand who I am why I'm here.

Then bring me the wallet, the coat, the keys, the pocket watch, and my phone.

My cell phone is somewhere.

I think it may either be at the movie theater.

Do you want to just here, just put your number into my phone, and then just call it, and maybe we'll see if we'll get a clue as to where it is.

All right, it's five

five.

No, put your number into my phone.

I'm handing you my phone.

There you go.

Just put it in there.

Where did it go?

Did you type where did it go into my phone?

That's not gonna help.

It's not type in your number and then dial your number.

What?

Which fee?

All right, so what up which what part of this here?

Put the write down the number.

Do you see the keypad here?

I brought up just the numpad.

I can't believe this is the confusing part to you.

So you can.

This keyboard just goes away when it wants.

God damn it.

How are you alive?

That's my question.

We fish sharks out of lava and are driven mad by the endless sea as we play you play indie horror fishing game Dredge 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 Matt Abadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

And welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where we're talking about the game that you played, and we played and we all played together.

Dredge.

Maybe it didn't play it.

That's okay.

You can still listen.

Don't stop listening to the episode if you didn't play it.

Yeah, I don't want you to hear that and be like, I didn't listen.

I didn't play.

I didn't play it.

And then turn it off.

Don't do that.

Nick.

Yeah.

Nick, Nick.

Could you say, if I said,

welcome back, chum bucket

or welcome back, bait bucket.

Okay.

Do you think you could just say the word dredge?

Just say the word dredge?

Like the way you would say edge?

Oh, that's good.

I forgot I used to say that.

Yeah, I could do that.

And can we call you Dr.

Edge for this episode?

Yeah, you can call me Dr.

Edge, honestly, indefinitely.

From this point forward.

This guy's Dr.

Edge.

Yeah, Yeah, he won't stop doing it.

Yeah.

Wait,

should Matt change?

Should Matt be like ahoy everyone?

I was literally about to say, should I say ahoy everyone?

It's pretty good.

It's pretty good.

I like that we did this part of the show, and I'm going to leave this part in, and now we're going to do it again, but different.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

All right, great.

So I'm starting.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you go first.

Should I just say, I'll just, let's just start the top of the show again.

Okay, great, okay, great, okay, great.

The whole thing, okay.

Yeah, we have a great guest at that.

We'll get to him, but we'll get to him.

I'm sorry that he has to wait through the part, but it's going to be good.

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, Heatheron Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Wiger.

I'm here with our third host.

Oh, shit.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Hold on.

Well, I should do a session.

I should do a seaworthy voice.

that's me the dread pirate nick wigger along with our third host matt apodaka ye are ahoy everyone ahoy everyone and welcome back chumbucket dredge that's crazy let's go they're going crazy they're going nuts they love that people love it should we have done should we have done like piratey names is the thing here's the thing is that a hat on a hat we could go we could do this all day Things we could have done, things we should have done on the show, things we should have said, you know, and I just think, yeah, maybe it's too much, but uh,

yeah, I think Petharg Campbell, Petharg Campbell is good, Nick Wyg,

yeah, and Matt Argbadaka, yeah, that's good.

Yeah, yeah, we'll just say, like, we just did that, yeah, it's fine.

That's good, that's good, yeah.

Pirates famously have the name Arg.

Yeah, that's when I think of pirates, I think of like, yeah, yeah, it's not like you know Blackbeard Arg the pirate.

Blackbeard and Campbell.

Okay, we're on to something.

That's pretty good.

Oh, how about oh, oh, oh, Nick,

one, the, oh no, hmm.

Look, we're good.

We did it.

We're good.

Yeah, Nick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fuck.

Our guest is pissed.

Our guest today, return to the show.

At this point, I'm almost pissed.

I think I'm a little mad too, if I'm being honest.

No one noticed I changed my Zoom username to Dr.

Edge.

Our guest today, return to the show, Oscar Monte.

Yes.

That's so good.

Hi, Oscar.

Welcome back.

Hi.

How's it going?

I just noticed you're wearing a Minions t-shirt, Dr.

Edge.

I am.

I am wearing.

Yes.

What?

My Minions Emotions t-shirt.

Oh, they're emotions.

I see.

It's like the periodic table, but of Minions Emotions.

Oh, There are so many.

Are they mugshots?

Yeah, Nick also has one with the Trump cabinet mugshots on it.

It was a fundraiser.

For what, I won't say.

Oscar, thrilled to have you here.

We love having you on the show, and I don't know if we've talked about this in the past.

So if we have, I apologize, but I don't recall discussing your WarioWare twisted poster, which is in your background.

Yes, yes, yes.

No,

I have moved to a different place and I have an office now, which is very exciting.

Sick as hell.

And crazy.

And like, whoa, adults have offices.

But the joy of putting stuff in the office is putting children's video games on your wall.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's absolutely it.

I don't use this office to do any work.

So Warrior Warri Twisted was a game I had for Game Boy Advance.

I assume you did as well.

And it had like the cartridge had like a gyromite in it.

That's right.

So that it detected when you would rotate it.

And that sounds like, well, that's what my phone does that these days.

But back then, it was a novelty.

It was huge.

I mean, come on.

Like any game with a peripheral and something that you insert.

Oscar.

Hell yeah.

Sorry, I get horny at nine in the morning.

No,

that was the joy of it.

I mean, that's essentially why I bought the game.

Cause I was like, whoa, you can put a thing in there that, like, you could tell if it's moving or not.

Yeah.

And it was the first Wario Ware game that I've ever played.

And because of it, I became a lifelong fan of the series.

Wow.

Did you like the most recent one?

I can't remember the name of the subtitle.

Get it together.

Yeah, get it together.

I did like it.

It's not as good.

The pinnacle of the Wario War games is the Wii version of it, Smooth Moves.

To me, that's like just

the best Wario War game out there.

But I like the micro games.

I'm a big fan.

Yeah.

I like figuring out how to play the game and also like beating it in 0.3 seconds.

It's fun.

It's a real hoot.

And I did like the Switch version, although as more time went through, like, I was like, I feel like the

when I reflect back on it, it kind of felt some of it felt kind of generic because they, the way, the way it worked for people who haven't played it is that you had a controllable character in every single mini-game, which was a novelty for the series, the new hook of it.

But, like, there were so many playable characters that the level had to work for all their different play styles.

So, as such, they felt a little bit less tail.

Like, just the weirdness of like sniffing like a, you know, a snot bubble back into a big nose.

You know what I mean?

Like it was like less of that sort of stuff.

And what I loved about Wario War Twisted, it was all just like, you know, again, it was just the fun of like spinning your Game Boy Advance and just how different that was from how every other handheld game played at the time.

And Oscar, you were saying that you like a game with the peripheral, and that's exactly Heather's favorite thing.

Oh, is it?

Yes, it is.

It's my favorite thing.

In fact, I heard about a peripheral this week that I'd never heard about before, and I am lightly obsessed with it.

Oh, which is that there was an exercise bike released for the Super NES,

and it had two games you could play, and you controlled the games by pedaling the bike.

And it was a full-size exercise bike.

No, and

you played like a mode seven racing game where you biked on the bike.

And they also made uh, so that was like a plug-in peripheral, but then they also made a full unit that stood on its own and had the monitor, television built into the handlebars and the, and the Super NES built in so that gyms could purchase this,

I think they called it

enter, what exertion exertainment, yeah, exertainment.

Um, so yeah, I'm lightly obsessed

look at a picture of it.

With the existence of this thing, I can't imagine that there are too many left in working order after all this time, but fuck.

That is a cool, like, oof.

That's a cool thing.

I mean, was this only released in Japan?

Did it ever make it to the States at all?

No, I think it was, I think it was definitely in the States.

Yeah, it was American.

And it was, I'm looking at this right now, and it was endorsed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Come on, which is wild.

Apparently, it retailed for $800 in 1994,

which is effectively the cost of a Peloton today.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, $1,500.

Yeah.

The Super NES.

And then the cartridge itself is on eBay for $2,800

since it's such a rare cart.

But, you know,

if I spent the money

on the bike, I would just...

put a ROM cart into my Super NES.

Yeah.

It's such a clunky design.

it it is so boxy and like kind of it like it looks like if you made a dystopian uh you know movie in the 70s where like everyone had to ride bikes to like generate activities like that would be the bike you would use it like really it does it looks even dated by 1994 standards i mean i'm thinking now could peloton have happened without this oh i don't think so great question

i don't think so whoever invented

say say no.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no.

That person is like, guys, in the 90s, there was a bike you can play with your Super Nintendo.

And they're like, shut up.

Nerd.

I remember

there was a game for the Wii called Babysitting Mama.

Do you remember this?

It's like Cooking Mama's spin-off.

Yeah, I remember all the mama games.

I didn't remember Babysitting Mama specifically.

But it came with an actual baby that you had to like take care of.

And you just shoved the Wii controller into the baby.

Wait, oh no.

Yeah, yeah.

And had to take care.

The baby looked really scary.

I remember that.

Okay, here's the terrifying baby that

Oscar thinks is so scary.

It's weird looking.

It is weird.

Look, it is at least a plush baby.

I was expecting like a hard plastic baby.

It is at least a...

It looks a little bit like it just has a lump of shit on its forehead.

Yeah, that hair tuft is pretty

suspect, if I do say so myself.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe a different color would have been the right choice for that.

Yeah.

What color, Nick?

Blonde?

There he goes again.

I'm just saying.

This is a,

that's horrifying.

I agree with Oscar.

I don't like looking at that.

Can I bring up one thing before we move on to babysitter mama just because I'm looking at the box art?

The box art is the baby.

It's like the bait, the plush baby in like a little cradle.

And it says, the first interactive baby and we game together, Wii game included,

parenthetical, look under baby.

Look under baby.

Look under baby.

Baby's just sitting on the Wii game.

It's a just a horrific.

But it's full diaper.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Look under baby.

I mean, that's also like the sort of letter a serial killer leaves in your living room.

Look under baby.

Look under baby.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Remember the commercial to babysitting mama was cursed.

It was like a very unhinged commercial, I remember.

It like freaked me out.

It freaked me out.

And I bought it.

You bought it.

I had it.

I had it.

I had it.

And I think

I played it once.

It was like, I don't like this.

This is, I feel very uncomfortable playing this.

It was weird.

I didn't like it.

But honestly, I saw the commercial and was like, this is funny.

I think I'm going to buy it because it's a silly game.

Like, what the fuck is this game?

And it's not as fun as you would think a baby, raising a baby game should be.

Like a Tamagotchi, you know?

It was like, okay.

And it's not as fun as cooking, mama.

Is this the, I'm going to put this commercial in the chat.

We can maybe watch this right now.

Let's watch it.

I can't wait.

Yes.

Oh, my God.

Mama delivers a whole new way to play Wii with Babysitting Mama.

Yay!

Babysitting comes to life.

Holds a baby like Mama.

As you care for your lovable friend.

Perfect.

Make baby smile and play.

Wonderful.

What a cutie.

Time to burn.

Pop, pop.

Wow, that's great.

Wow, that's great.

Play against your friends and see.

Who is the greatest babysitter on your block?

Babysitting Mama from Majesco.

Ready to do for everyone.

Also available.

Crafting Mama for Nintendo DS.

So game footage is intercut with live-action shots of tween girls rocking the baby peripheral.

And then there's a shaking component, which is maybe not the best thing to associate with a baby game.

Yeah.

You're shaking the Wii remote, but it's like, it's.

Also, the baby was holding the game in the commercial, but as we all know,

the game was under the baby.

Yeah, looking at the baby.

So false advertisement.

I thought you cheated sounded a little bit like no-ho hank in berry yeah kind of some sort of vaguely european yeah like whoa it's baby okay

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Before we move on, there were two sort of gaming news things that I thought we should talk about.

The first being

the retirement of Charles Martinet.

Yes, it was.

It's ambiguous as to what happened exactly.

He is being shown the door, perhaps because he is just, you know, hanging it up, perhaps because they're like, you know, we're going to go in a different direction.

Well, there was an excellent,

like a real

sleight of hand pulled by Nintendo in this announcement, which is that months ago, we've seen the footage for Super Mario Wonder,

and nobody batted an eye.

Then they announce that Charles is retiring from

the

games and is like, and he won't be performing the voice of Mario in Wonder.

And none of us when Wonder was released was like, Mario sound fucking weird to you?

To put that in perspective,

you know, we had to replace a voice at

Rick and Morty.

And there's really haven't heard about this.

you know, some trepidation going into the voice, the voices that will be cast.

And

a trailer was released for season seven that was all clips from previous seasons.

And the internet was furious at the sound of the new Rick and Morty.

Angry as fuck,

which

is, it's just pre-existing footage.

Like, they're

Surprise, bitch.

And you know what?

He's back.

This is the statement that Nintendo released.

It's a tweet from Nintendo of America that I'm reading.

It says, we have a message for fans of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Please take a look.

Very ambiguous.

That's already a scary statement.

Yes.

I will say thank God for, you know, I'm not a Mario fan, but I am a fan of the kingdom.

So it's good that they address people like

they're addressing the kingdom at large, not just the fans of Mario.

Like, I'm a Goomba stan all the way.

I don't know about Luigi and et cetera, but

come on, those coin

boxes.

Hell fucking yeah.

And this is the statement from Nintendo.

Charles Martine has been the original voice of Mario in Nintendo games for a long time, as far back as Super Mario 64.

Charles is now moving into the brand new role of Mario Ambassador.

With this transition, he will be stepping back from recording character voices for our games, but he'll continue to travel the world sharing the joy of Mario and interacting with you all.

It's been an honor working with Charles to help bring Mario to life for so many years, and we want to thank and celebrate him.

Please keep an eye out for a special video message from Shigeru Miyamoto and Charles himself, which we will post at a future date.

So why not

post all of this at once?

Yeah,

the delay on the video makes everything just leads to more speculation, which we're doing now.

Maybe by the time this episode is out, we'll have seen the video.

I hope so.

What is the speculation?

What y'all thinking?

Well, there's okay, there's, there's, you know, the really, there's the sad possibility that he's, he's not that old, but that he's maybe had, there's some sort of medical issue.

There's that, people are speculating that.

There's the possibility that he asked for too much money, you know, and that things fell apart that way, but they're still amicable because

they, maybe they found a

and I think there's also just like the possibility that just creatively they were like, this guy can't cut it anymore,

but we want to give him a golden parachute.

Yeah.

Which was that he was fucking pissed off when Chris Pratt was the voice of Mario in the movie.

That honestly might be it.

That's like probably the most

straightforward answer.

I wonder if he had to audition for the role.

Like if they even, you know what I mean?

If they even gave him the courtesy to be like, hey, we're thinking of you to do this.

Like they were just like, nah, fuck off.

The dude played Mario for 30 years.

Right.

And then the first time it's on

in movie theaters, it's some other dude.

And then the next thing that happens is he's not going to be the voice of Mario anymore.

Like that feels to me too.

I mean, obviously we have no evidence and it's all speculation, but it feels like a really well-timed coincidence.

I think the nice thing is that we can, we know he's not canceled because if he was canceled, then he wouldn't continue to be the brand ambassador.

Exactly.

So that's that's comforting.

Unless they're doing something really interesting.

Yeah.

The video is going to be Miyamoto walking up to a man who's blackbagged and bound to a chair and just shooting him.

Yeah.

You want your Mario?

Bam.

Yeah.

I can't wait for Miyamoto to release his take on This Is America music video.

And the other thing I thought we should talk about, because we talked about it a little bit on the show, is that the Sony Project Q has been named the PlayStation Portal.

And it's been announced that it will release for $199.99

this year.

And according to PlayStation,

or to Sony rather, It has no Bluetooth and you have to buy a new set of PlayStation Link compatible headsets if you want to hear audio on it in headphones.

It has no local play, not even media playback.

No PS5 cloud streaming, and it's targeting the same battery life as the DualSense controller.

So, this is

their remote play device, and that's

it's $200, and it kind of does

almost nothing.

Yeah, that sucks.

This is dog.

Well, well, okay, hold on.

Uh-oh.

I'm going to defend a Sony peripheral that I really, really am.

I'm shocked by this, Heather.

Well, I immediately texted you guys, what are they doing?

And then I thought about it for a while.

And here's what I'm hoping.

I'm hoping that there is

future,

like that this is a Trojan horse to get future optional content in games where you use this as a second screen controller.

So you're playing on your television,

holding the PlayStation portal, and then using the touchscreen on your portal to do like menu selection or like

that it's that it's like almost like a Wii U or like a

Nintendo DS.

I can't wait for Kojima to get his hands on it.

Yeah.

But if it's just literally like you're streaming to a fucking tablet, with a PlayStation controller snapped on it.

Yeah.

That's that's a weird.

That's weird.

The dual sense is already so expensive.

And so if we're going to say, like, you know, hey, we already have like a, like a $70, $80 controller for the system itself, but now we have an additional $200 peripheral, or maybe there will ultimately be a cheaper version down the line.

There will be a price drop.

Or we're going to say that like some games will support this optional,

you know, ostensibly portable PlayStation 5, but in practice, it's just another way to control these games.

There will be like one to two interesting games that make use of that, but it will mostly be just like an pointless feature.

It recalls to me the Pocket Station for the original PlayStation 1,

which was a memory card that had a screen built in.

And there were like a few Japanese games that used it, and you could play the little games on the Pocket Station.

But for the most part, it was not like a

well-entrenched peripheral and i i feel like i don't know there's a world where this thing

i can i cannot think of a single play scenario where i would need it

yeah it feels really dumb yeah

but but also sony just makes such baffling choices across the board like remember the ps vita tv Like what the fuck were they?

Why would they do that?

What were they thinking?

But also, you could use the Vita TV to play Netflix.

You can't even use this fucking thing to play Netflix.

Oh, no, yeah, that you can't.

It doesn't support Bluetooth.

It's just like, look, Nintendo does everything so stupidly.

But they eventually introduced an update where you can use a Bluetooth headset on a Switch.

Like, you can't do that.

This is, this is meant to be, to force you to buy another set of headphones.

It's a fucking pain in the ass.

I'll also say the other thing that made me think of Heather, because the Pocket Station was never released in the U.S., but the VMU was.

So for the Dreamcast, you know, this is the controller.

And I, and we, we, of course, we, I know you and I both were, were Dreamcast owners, Dreamcast enthusiasts.

Even that, even that with every dream, like came with every Dreamcast controller

was not well utilized.

That probably was more just like the screen, you know, resolution was so low and it was monochrome.

There wasn't much you could do with that display.

But like,

I don't know.

I have a hard time seeing this have legs and all.

This is just such a confusing device.

Why did they make this?

Why didn't they make, so, okay,

we're talking about the VMU.

We're talking about second screen possibilities.

Why doesn't Sony,

Sony makes cell phones?

Why don't they make a PlayStation branded cell phone that snaps into your fucking controller, becomes a second screen for your PlayStation, and is this device?

And then you can take the phone out and use it.

Like if Sony wanted to convert me from the Apple ecosystem, a PlayStation phone that was somehow compatible with PS5 games would be, I mean, that would be a, that, that's a huge garden that they could bring people into.

That's a great idea.

Crazy.

Trademark it right away.

No, I can't.

I can't do that.

They won't, they won't give me.

Anyway,

like, it's not like I'm asking a company that doesn't have a cell phone division to develop a cell phone.

I'm just asking them to brand it and create a controller that snaps into it and then streams content from your PS5 to your cell phone.

I mean, I think the reason they don't do that is because Sony is Sony.

I always love the old onion headline, Sony releases new stupid piece of shit that doesn't fucking work.

But yeah,

this device seems pretty useless, unfortunately.

It's a shame.

I would love a, I would love a PlayStation.

I would love a new PSP, a PSP 5, however they want to brand it.

That That would be great.

It'd be so good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What are you going to do?

No.

All right.

Well, hey, we're this far into the podcast.

We should ask the question that we ask every episode.

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

Oscar, what are you playing?

Should we have said this as Pirates?

Oh, shit.

What are you playing?

What are you playing?

I got a pitch.

Maybe it's too much.

What?

What are you planking?

That's good.

It's It's not too much.

Okay, good.

Because you know how they walk the plank?

Yeah, no, it's not, it's not too much.

I thought you were referring to, you know, that ab exercise.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, like, you know, if you're doing that, we can talk about that.

Oscar, are you playing anything lately?

I'm playing some.

Yes, I'm playing two games at the moment.

I'm playing

Ninokuni Remastered,

which I have not played before because it was originally on the the PS3, I believe.

Yep.

And it was like later on in the PS3 shelf life, I believe.

So

I never really had a chance to play the game, but I'm loving it.

It's really fun.

I was surprised by the Pokemon aspect of the game.

I wasn't expecting that.

I don't know if I missed.

people talk about that, but no one did.

So when it was like, oh, you can like catch monsters and they're your friends now, I was like, what?

Cool.

So I'm playing that.

And I'm playing.

This is embarrassing to say, but I don't care.

You wouldn't judge me.

I'm playing Knack.

Wow.

Wow.

We're not going to judge you here.

Sounds like Dr.

Edge is.

No, never.

If you saw some of the stuff I play,

who am I to judge anyone?

Before we move on from Ninokuni, I can't let

a moment where we talk about Nino Kuni to pass without playing the overworld theme from Nino Kuni, which I just put into the chat.

It is so fucking good.

It's the composer of all of the Studio Ghibli films.

I think Joey Zaishi.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the fucking score is so good.

It's so impressive.

I loved Nino Kuni.

So let's play that overworld theme.

So fucking good.

Wow.

I mean,

this sounds like a fucking great video game.

Yeah.

I love Dragon Quest XI, but it reused all of the themes from the previous Dragon Quest.

Like, there's no new music at all.

And it just, and it doesn't have enough of it.

And, you know, when you hear just like some original scoring that's just so

lush and fully realized, it's, oh man, that's what that game was missing.

Yeah.

Ninokuni is so impressive because it feels like a movie.

And I think maybe that was the intention.

But I was, I was just, I was so blown away.

I'm blown away.

I'm not very far into it, but I love it so far.

I looked it up because I believe this was true.

And it is the case for anyone who wants to play.

It is on Game Pass right now.

That's why I'm playing it.

Yes.

Oh, there you go.

And what brought you back to NAC?

It was, so I just, okay, I'm a late adopter.

I just bought a PS5.

Got it.

And

thank you.

It's great.

I love it.

And I was looking at games to transfer over to my PS5.

And I didn't realize that I owned Knack for the longest time.

And I never even touched it.

So I was like, you know what?

I'm going to.

This is going to be my champagne bottle, which I will break the PS5.

I'm going to launch with the shittiest PlayStation 4 game ever made.

So I'm playing Knack.

And you know, I don't know if y'all played Knack, but

I did not.

Nope.

It ain't good.

It ain't good.

There's something, you know, satisfying about the gameplay and that sort of like, I'm turning off all of my brain cells and just sort of like, it's not doing anything new.

It's just sort of like a regular action-adventure game.

But the storyline is so stupid.

The voice acting is

not good.

I'm sorry to the voice actors who worked in it.

It's, it's just a game that I'm trying to beat.

Right.

We've all been there.

Oh, well,

100%.

Something we've done on the show a lot.

Matt, what are you playing?

Well, yeah.

So I'm, you know,

I've been playing a lot, a lot, a lot still of...

Of Baldur's Gate 3.

Oh, yeah.

I had an issue in my game where I had to go back to an earlier earlier save and I lost a little bit of progress.

I, uh, not too much story progress, but I did, I felt like I missed some uh

some like social progress, I guess you could say, with some of the characters.

And I had to go back and do, I had to go back and find some extra characters that I had, uh, and uh, you know, have conversations with them again.

But I had a glitch where, um,

uh, uh, what's his name?

The druid that you you rescue at one point is supposed to appear back in

the town where he's from or the little village where he lives.

And if you go to do this other thing before going to talk to him,

there's a known glitch where if you do it, it's sort of in the wrong order.

He's not there.

This is Halcen.

Yeah, Halcen, yes.

And I was like looking and looking for him.

I was like, oh, I want to complete this part of the quest, but he's not here.

What do I do?

And I was googling like, where is this guy?

What do I do?

Do I have to do something to trigger him being there?

And it just turned out that I

did something in a slightly, not even a wrong order, because there's no wrong order to do anything.

And there's just like a, it's a, you know, it's a, it's just a glitch.

There's just like a programming error in there that he'll make him not appear where he's supposed to be.

And so I had to go all the way back to doing this one thing.

before I had a bunch of people over at my camp to have a party.

And I had to go talk to him first instead of going straight to the party.

Because, you know, you tell me there's a party happening at my camp.

I'm going straight there.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

You're a party ambassador.

Yeah.

Well, in your camp, you got to go.

Yeah, exactly.

You guys don't know this because you guys, I'm talking to the listeners.

You don't know this.

I'm recording right now with a lampshade on my head.

Also, if you're younger than like, I think

25, that doesn't mean anything.

No.

Well, maybe they know this.

I have a tie tied around my head, also.

Yeah, a tie tied around your head, I think, is still that's a universal party experience.

Yeah, because I had my tie on.

I usually record in a suit and tie.

We kind of keep it

a business attire when we're recording.

And we expect our guests to do that too.

So, Oscar, thank you for doing that.

You look great.

Everyone looks like a million bucks.

But I had my tie on.

I loosened it.

And that's usually enough to be like a party guy.

But I was like, nah, nah.

You went all the way.

Put it all the way up, you know, around my head.

And then, you know, know, tied it there.

And then sort of was like, this guy came to party.

But I, so, but I have, I'm back to where I was, basically, and back to getting my ass kicked trying to get through these fucking mountains to get to this other thing.

But I just find the gameplay so

like, I don't know.

This might be, I mean, I'm going to be playing this for a long time, certainly.

But something about even just like walking around in the world.

I just love.

Like, I just, it just feels so good to me.

And like, even if you're not doing anything too exciting, I feel like I'm still having the time of my life.

And there was like a point this year where I like don't know.

I couldn't foresee something else potentially being game of the year that wasn't

Breath of the Wild.

Tears of the Kingdom.

And this is like pretty close.

And I'm not even done with it.

Like, it's like, it's so fucking good to me.

Yeah.

And I just, I just really am just so impressed by it.

I just love it.

Did you take a picture of your character?

I want to see what your character looks like.

I have not, but I'll send it to you afterwards.

She's hot as hell.

I don't really know much about this game.

The only thing I do know, which my friend has told me maybe eight to 10 times,

was that

he was like, do you know you can make that your character circumcised or uncircumcised?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And every

character type, like every character class or character race, rather, where it's like a dragonborn or like if you're like an elf or like a human or something, they all have sort of like

specific genitalia.

It's it's great.

And you can sort of make a lot of the characters, a lot of the like party members try to have sex with you,

which is a very fun part of the game.

And they'll cut, they have specific dialogue depending on whether or not you have a foreskin.

Yeah.

Cut ew.

Cut

Yeah, they say a lot of that stuff.

It's pretty rude, actually.

I discussed it either way.

Yeah, I'm playing that.

Matt, I agree with you.

The game is really staggering and impressive.

The bugs are a bummer just because you're like afraid that something's going to go wrong.

And that's the kind of tightrope walk of playing the game is just like, oh man,

I don't want to break a quest.

I don't want to, you know, mess, I don't want to mess something up.

Just the uncertainty you have as the user.

yes, uh, as to, as to what you and, and like, so that's a, that's a little bit of a, of a, of an issue with just playing it like so close to launch with such a game that's just so complex.

Uh, but I think that once all that stuff is patched out, it'll just be, you know, again, just utterly staggering.

And there was that, you just reminded me of something because I'm playing on, I'm playing primarily on Steam Deck, so I'm used to the controller layout.

And I was experimenting with some of the other, you can install other

controller layouts like through Steam.

And I was looking at some of the other ones, and you sort of had to make a choice whether you want the controller feel or if you want like the mouse and keyboard feel on the controller, which I don't love.

And I wish there was like a hybrid.

I can't find the hybrid control basically where I want the ability to play like I'm playing in controller mode, but I also want the ability to press like the back buttons on the back to do quick save or something or quick mode.

Because as it stands right now, I have to pause and then save or hit quick save in the pause menu to

like before I make a choice that I'm worried about,

you know,

breaking something or anytime something is about to happen, I'm always hitting, I want, I pause so that I can save.

And I wish I could just push a button like you could on a mouse and keyboard to quick save automatically.

Like an F5, a quick save.

Exactly.

Well, I mean, like, do you have a...

I don't have a Steam Deck, so I don't know how it works, but can you remap the controls at all?

Or you well, I'll have to see a custom layout you can import because like there, yeah, that's the thing I've been experimenting with.

There's like I've been importing some custom ones, and they're all like,

okay, yeah, here's the controller layout, but it doesn't have the specific thing that I'm looking for, or it'll have like here's um mouse and keyboard stuff laid over the um

the controller.

But the thing about that is it the UI completely changes in the game if you're using using the mouse and keyboard input uh so that stuff changes and then the way you even move about the world feels different because you're now doing the point and clicking thing of it whether instead of um just navigating a character and feeling like you're like actually walking around in it you're just sort of like pointing and then your character progresses to wherever you pointed to or you know goes to whatever item you uh got it on but i i'm i'm confident that there's something out there that i'm just not seeing and i'm sure

when this episode comes out, someone will tell me right away.

And then for weeks and weeks, as people listen to it, people will tell me.

So I think, yes, exactly.

It's going to happen.

Heather, what are you playing?

Well,

kind listeners of our show have alerted me that

across Discord and Twitter have alerted me that the Mac

Boulder's Gate 3

save

will not transfer to the game itself when it officially releases to the Mac, nor will it transfer to PS5 when the PS5 game comes out because it is still in early access.

And I

instantly stopped playing Baldur's Gate because I was so fucking pissed off.

Wow.

I don't know.

I've probably only put seven hours into the game, but that's a lot of time

to to re that that I'll have to replay, which also means that I'm gonna have to, like in order to make it interesting, I'm gonna have to play an entirely different kind of character

when I relaunch that game on PS5 in September, September, um,

which is gonna be a hard month because Armored Core is going to be eating up all my fucking time.

Um,

so yeah, what am I going to play in the interim?

I have Viking Madness, so I'm thinking about playing Hellblade, Sitsuna Sacrifice, or God of War Ragnarok, which I still haven't played.

Heather.

Me neither.

You know what?

I didn't, I didn't play it either.

And I know Apodako loved it.

You're the weird one here.

I'm a fucking little freak.

Appadaka loved it.

Loved it.

I love it.

And I'm considering

getting

just downloading it from my PS5 while I'm abroad and starting to play it because I've got Viking Madness.

You keep saying that.

I've got Viking Madness.

I do.

I have Viking Madness.

And if you listen to our sister show,

Get Anime, you know how terribly I have Viking Madness.

I'm reading history books.

I'm going to Scandinavian bakeries.

I am

watching Vinland Saga nonstop.

Yeah, you're beheading way both.

Heather, can you tell me a fun fact about Vikings?

Yeah, sure.

Let's see.

So Viking history was oral, right?

It was orally passed down.

Like they would tell their stories, tell their stories.

And it wasn't until about

200 years after, I'm just barreling through it, 200 years after

the Viking age happened.

Oh, man, I've got two things I want to tell you.

That these

stories were finally written down by like monks, right?

And monks will have an agenda.

And so like you can't really trust whether or not these sagas that were written by the monks later are a little bit warped because the Christians were going to bring their own baggage to Viking stories.

But the poetry was so complex.

And the rhyme schemes were so intense that we are almost certain that the poetry is the Viking poetry because it would fall apart if you passed it on.

Like, if any of the rhyme scheme didn't like continue or work, it would be like a song that didn't make sense.

So, the Viking poetry is probably a pretty accurate description of Viking life and Viking sagas.

Whereas the actual sagas that aren't poetic are a little less accurate.

The other thing I want to say is that I also learned so far that that the

Viking Age began because in the year 536, there was a huge volcanic eruption in we don't know where on earth that blotted out the sun for eight years on planet Earth and fucking destroyed like all of the blossoming empires of the Iron Age.

Or maybe it was the late Bronze Age.

Either way, 536, this huge volcano goes off and you can see the sediment all over over the planet.

And like, you can also see in the archaeological record,

farms shrunk and then were taken over by the forest because like people couldn't get shit to like come out of the land.

And in that power vacuum is when Viking society began to raise.

So that the reason the Viking Age happened was because maybe as many as four, certainly one to two volcanoes went off all at the same time and blanketed the the entire world in ash.

Wow.

I just want to say real quick that the only monk that I trust is Adrian Monk.

Who's that?

From Monk.

Oh, I didn't know Monk's name.

Monk had a first name.

Yeah, no, his name is Adrian Monk.

Do they say that on the show?

Yeah, because they don't just call him Monk.

They don't?

Well, they call him Monk, but, you know, maybe his superiors will call him Adrian.

Like, I would imagine that the drawing that somebody could do of the moment that just happened.

It's a jungle out there.

Me, like, happy, I know, like, standing, like, triumphantly telling a story about something I'm passionate about,

and

Matt and Nick

having a conversation below me, like on a panel, where they're just, like, making fun of me, and I, you can, you can see like a crack in my, in my, in my, in my my sanity.

Well, here's the thing.

I think it should be celebrated that I waited for you to finish the story.

You're right.

Thank you, Matt.

Thank you.

Can I also say, I didn't make the Adrian Monk comment.

And in fact, I decided not to make my comment about these volcanoes also killing off the dinosaurs.

So I

need some restraint here.

Thank you for sharing those stories.

I enjoy that.

Thank you for sharing.

Like, what is this podcast?

Am I still on how did this get played?

And you guys are on a different show?

Yeah, we've heard of the timeline's fractured.

I did think it was interesting.

Yeah, it was fascinating.

Nick, what are you playing?

Well, I've been playing the game we're going to discuss this week with the bulk of my playtime, but I did want to shout out one thing.

And this is a week old, but since we last recorded, Vampire Survivors, one of my favorite games in recent years, has released on Switch, which feels like it's natural home.

So, if you've been waiting on Vampire Survivors because you don't have one of the other platforms it's available on, uh, but you do have a Switch, uh, check it out.

I believe it's on sale right now.

Maybe I'm wrong about that.

And also, they they completely revamped.

I mean, they actually converted over to a totally new engine on the PC version, so it's got a lot more features and what have you if you've been playing

if you stepped away from it for a while.

But yeah, Vampire Survivors, great game.

Uh, If you have too much time and it goes too slowly, this is a great way to just make the hours vaporize.

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But let's talk about this week, this month's We Play, You Play, Dredge.

Dredge was released on March 30th of this year, developed by Black Salt Games, which is a four-person team based in New Zealand.

It is a, and this is not my description, it's someone else's description, but it's a Lovecraftian horror fishing game.

It's, you know, definitely got sort of like

elements of Eldritch horrors and so on, and

just

being driven mad by the chaos of the universe.

But it's also got just like fishing mechanics.

And as such, it's a game that's both like soothing and stressful.

And honestly, I had a great time with this thing.

I finished it.

I also finished it.

I finished it as well.

Wow.

I didn't finish it.

I swear.

I know.

I know.

Go back to Ragnarok.

I got close.

I got really close to finishing it.

I had kind of a crazy week, but

I,

and you know, I did, I, I, but the time that I spent with it, oh boy, I did quite enjoy it as well.

Yeah, so it's, I will say, for me, I think it peaks in the first act.

I think like it's the best part of the game is the start of the game where you're just being because you, you, it's, it's a lot tenser when your ship is shittier, you have like a lot less

time you can spend out at sea before you have to go back to dock.

So, like, you have to really pick your spots.

And I think as it progresses, the other thing is that the first couple of towns, you got Big Merrow and Little Merrow,

are like they have like a lot of NPCs there and they have a lot going on.

And then as you start to get to these more remote towns, it'll be like, you know, one to two NPCs who are populating this entire biome.

And as such, it just feels a little bit less filled in.

And so I kind of feel like I'm glad I played it through to the end, but I do feel like it didn't quite heighten as much as I would have liked.

I mean, honestly, I think that is my biggest complaint of the game.

And after playing it, it's like

the premise is so strong.

It's a very weird premise.

Those freaks in New Zealand, like, how did you come up with this game?

And it started off so strong.

And yeah, I don't know.

I don't, I can't say ultimately.

If I enjoyed, I enjoyed playing the game, but is the game good?

The first third of the game was good.

And then it just sort of kept,

I don't know, it,

I think potentially it could have been a great game, but because it was so sort of sparse and, you know, it was, it became a lot easier towards the end because you upgraded your your boat.

Um, to me, I just felt like, oh, the challenge in the first chunk was missing.

Uh,

so I don't know.

I'm a bit torn about.

Yeah, it's, it's the, it's the difficulty of like, so as the game game progresses you have you know it starts off there's like coastal fishing and uh oceanic fishing there's a handful of shallow fishing there's a handful of of types of uh gear that you need to fish different types of of uh fish uh water creatures from different types of uh water creatures uh different types of of

of uh of fish from different types of water.

As it progresses, those like just increase, but it just leads to more gear that you have to add onto your ship, more nets and poles and what have you.

But the challenge doesn't really increase in terms of catching these fish.

Like there's slightly different mechanics in terms of how the fishing works, but it all kind of feels similar.

And the other thing is,

so the main choke point in the game is how much money you have to upgrade your ship.

But at a certain point, and I think this speaks to the inverse difficulty curve of it, how the game gets easier the more you play, is that once you start getting some passive income, if you watch a show like

what's the

a loan, they they talk about a thing like automatic food, like fish, like food they don't have to actively pursue.

So, just like laying down like a net or something like that, and then and then fishing it out the other day.

Once you start to get nets and once you start to get crab pots in particular, you can just kind of dot the ocean with those and then just have more money than you know what to do with.

You can upgrade everything and that the difficulty sort of slinks away.

So, yeah, I agree from a gameplay standpoint that's kind of a bummer um that said the fishing is all like remained fun for me and also just like it's so much atmosphere and vibes and i think that that's what this game absolutely nails the art direction and the sound design here's what i would have loved uh i would have loved a game with absolutely no story and the mechanical challenges of the first you know 20 of the game then scale all the way up to your you're essentially hunting white whales.

Like, I wish that's what I was expecting.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I wish that I like, I honestly, I don't give a shit about what, like, the

red, red lighthouse.

When you help me out with the light house, like, also, the quests are like, can you get me a

rotting eel from a grotto across the entire world and I'll fulfill your wildest dreams?

And then that bitch gives you like a hundred bucks.

Like, that was was literally the most annoying side quest.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, so, so

I expected, or, or wanted, not expected, because I didn't expect anything going into this, but what I wanted was: okay, I have upgraded my reels.

Now, I'm going to get to fish these abyssal, abyssal.

Is that how do you say that?

Abyssal, abyssal, uh, or

hatal fishes, fishes, uh,

and I want

those

mini-games, the little like rock band style, press a button at the right time, QTE fishing mini-games to become incredibly complicated so that you are fishing for an entire day and racing against the sunset to catch this one rare fish.

Almost like a cross between Monster Hunter and Dredge.

And like that game, that would be, I mean, you could, like, you're upgrading and upgrading your fish until you're like detonating dynamite under the water and like bringing a ton of fish up to the sea.

Like make the fish, and I hate to say this, make the catching of the fish a puzzle.

So you have to like kill a bunch of fish in an area that then draws a different fish to that area that then you can fish.

I love that.

Like, like,

I don't.

I don't need, I don't need some fucking dude to be like, I haven't talked to my brother for five years.

Can you blow up like this little, this little rock ledge?

And then maybe I'll go talk to him.

Especially since once bombs are active in the game, you can buy them from fucking anybody.

So I don't know.

It's there were there.

There was a game hiding behind this game that I really wanted to play.

I would just want to be, I don't want to be too down on this game because I did actually really enjoy it.

I think overall it's like,

I had a lot of fun with it.

Yeah, me too.

I I agree with these, I agree with these criticisms and I made them myself, but I do feel like it pays off.

And I, contra Heather, I actually like the story in this game.

I especially like how it resolves, which we won't get to right away, but it's like,

I found it really satisfying, just the idea of, I think, just the way it evokes just like loneliness and desperation.

And like, that's just what I know about a lot of people who are like really into fucking like living in remote places or or or just like spend so much time on boats and shit.

It's just like, it's a lot of people are just like kind of like, I don't know,

something went awry in your life if you're spending most of your time on a boat.

You know what I mean?

And I think it really explores that.

And

I think the player characters arc is interesting.

Yeah, I think one thing that, so like...

As you're, as you're exploring the ocean, you'll see like massive like leviathan-sized creatures

that I, again, similar to you, Heather, I thought like at some point, okay, I'm going to try to like whale something.

Like this giant blue whale that I see that's, that's, you know, 40 times the size of my little boat.

At some point, I'm going to have to catch one of these things, but then that never pays off.

You can take photographs of them, but that's just like less satisfying.

And I don't feel like any of the side quests, because again, all the incentives are just monetarily and money stops being a problem.

They, they're, yeah, I kind of stopped doing all those pursuits, they're called.

But, Matt, let's let's hear your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, I think my favorite, one of my favorite parts was I do agree that like the

first part of the game was a little harder, but once you're once you get like a speed upgrade for the boat, I was like, this is, I love this.

Like, I actually, you know, because there are emergent things that can happen where you can get like attacked kind of by fish or like by scary things at night.

And not that that was too scary for me, but like I, the window for me finishing this game was getting smaller and smaller just as like this month went on.

And I decided to turn it on, turn on passive mode in the game, which is like the mode, it's like kind of like not scary mode, but

right.

So you can kind of just like get through stuff.

And I'm telling you right now, I didn't think it was too scary for me.

It was like, I don't think it was like scary at all.

Why are you shivering, man?

Well, there's a ghost right off the corner.

I didn't think it was that scary, but I was just like, you know, I'm trying to get through this without fucking up or, you know, without getting, you're having to go back a save or whatever.

Um, so turning that on kind of just made it more of a vibes game, kind of, where, like, you're still doing the stuff and like figuring out what's going on.

But I, it was just, it was just a little chiller, and that I really liked.

I, I, I loved how, like, relaxing kind of that it was.

And, uh,

uh, you know, my, uh,

my girlfriend, um,

uh,

she, she was like, oh, like, the music in this game is so good.

And she never comments

in a way where she's talking about something she likes about the video game that I'm playing.

But she was like, the music in this is so relaxing and so, like, she called it

like spa music almost.

Like,

when I had it paused at one point, and I was like, oh, yeah, it's like pretty, you know, you're out at the sea, you're kind of just like, you know, I'm just catching a, you know, a bunch of weird fish and stuff.

It was pretty, I did like that.

The mechanic that I loved, and I was talking to you guys a little bit of this about before,

the way phishing feels and the way dredging items feels from...

Specifically dredging, the titular mechanic is rad.

It's so good.

It feels great.

And I played it on PS5, and there's not like

PS5 integration for the

dual scents, but it feels good on the controller.

I love a timed mechanic like that.

So the fact that there's so much of that in the game was fun and that there's various ones for fishing was really great.

and i loved i loved upgrading too i and the story like you know i didn't get through all of it and so when we get to the start the stuff where you have to talk about like what's going on and like in the ending or whatever go off i don't i'm not like worried about this game being spoiled for me at all so say what you want to say um but the story that i experienced thus far i got through like almost like almost all of it.

I think I got to like what part are you up to?

I'm in chapter four.

Like, and I know that there's six.

So there's still a little bit to go, but I got through a pretty decent chunk of it.

Yeah, you're on.

And I do intend to finish it because I was really enjoying it.

I do sort of wish also that I had bought it on

a different platform, just because

I could have been playing it while doing something else, but like PS5, I was just like, oh, I'll just get it here because

Baldur's Gate's on Steam Deck.

That'll be my Steam Deck thing.

And then it's, you know, these are the choices you make.

And I made my bed.

I had to lie in it.

But

I did.

I did quite enjoy it.

And I liked the freaky little fishies.

I'll tell you that.

Let's talk about that in a second.

I do want to, you mentioned the music.

And let's

I'm putting a track in the chat if we want to play this one, Matt.

This is from the soundtrack.

The score is by David Mason.

And I ended up buying the OST on Steam after.

Because I was just like, I really like this.

And I just want to listen to this.

And you know, there were a few uh pieces of music that were called Final Fantasy and Wind Waker, uh, Legend of Zelda Wind Waker to me.

Um, but I'm the whole there feels like there's a lot of Wind Waker inspiration, yeah.

You know, it's like it's like a kind of a dark Wind Waker, anyway.

This theme is uh, is the restless town,

It's kind of that walking that line again, just like, you know, it's calming and haunting at once, ambiguous, ethereal.

I don't know.

I think it's just like a knot of lovely scoring throughout.

Isn't that harp?

Isn't that the same chord as the Final Fantasy Prelude?

That's what I was thinking, yeah.

It sounds similar.

anyway.

Can I go back to something

I said that it's not about the game?

I said girlfriend.

Are you going to say monk?

I want to talk about monk again.

I said, Adrian.

I said girlfriend, and I just think the word fiancé is weird.

So, and I didn't want to go to wife because I was just like, I'm not married.

So, I didn't know what to do.

So, I said girlfriend.

I didn't want to confuse anybody.

But that's.

What did you want to say, Matt?

It's off.

It's off.

My chick.

The petrothal is off.

Oh, boy.

My chick.

Okay, ludicrous.

My chick bad.

Well, and you know, on the other side of the coin, my chick good as well.

Have you announced this on the podcast?

I don't think I've seen this on the podcast.

No, no, no.

I've had a crazy couple weeks.

Yeah.

I got engaged and then a week later, congratulations, buddy.

Thank you.

Yeah.

But it's thank you very much.

And thank you.

But yeah, I'm very excited.

But yeah, I just didn't.

I'm struggling with the word fiancée because I think it's strange.

I think it's a weird.

I think it's a weird word.

What if you said it like

Billy Zane in Titanic?

Oh, my fiancé?

My fiancé.

My fiancé.

Maybe I'll go full Billy Zane.

I'm a little bit of a fan of a player every time.

I didn't want to derail and like talk personal news, but I was just like, that didn't sit right with me for a second.

So I felt like I had to say something.

But anyway, you can go back to talking about Dredge and stop talking about me.

Congrats, buddy.

Thank you very much.

I'm very excited.

Yeah, it's great.

You know,

this game has a lot about wives and betrothals.

It actually is.

You find a lot of bottles that are just like adrift at sea that will just have diary entries about someone and their, you know,

their issues with their spouse to be and how they've been driven mad by the endless ocean.

And then that ends up tying into the story, which we'll maybe get to.

So I guess they at a certain point patched this game to eliminate the the time limits on the side quests, the pursuits, which was a thing that was in there initially, and I guess probably would have added a little bit more tension.

But also, as I'm thinking through some of those pursuits, I think that also would have made them just extra annoying.

So, I think that was probably a good, I mean, they did it.

I'm sure I trust that that was the right move, not having played the original version.

Yeah, I can't imagine playing the those the side quests with the

hooded figures, yes, trying to find specific fish during a time frame.

That would have driven me crazy.

Or, like, or like the

quest and the mangrove, if those had been timed, that would have been like really exciting.

Like, you would have been

fucking smashing up your boat constantly trying to get those fish.

That would have been kind of neat.

I would have done, I would have been okay with

a timed version of the mangrove quests

just because that feels like that area was so

it

it was designed to be raced through at the edge of your ability to control your boat.

So, the mangrove for people who haven't played the game, it is or haven't gotten that far.

It's a section, it's like chapter four.

Sorry, yeah, what's the matter?

All right, well, I feel like I just ruined it for people who weren't in spoiler country.

No, I'm just going to give, I'm just giving a little bit of context for what it we're not,

you didn't even spoil anything.

The woman grove,

thank you, Matt.

Congrats on your engagement.

Thank you so much.

There's a so it's like it's like a there's a it it's like an archipelago uh with a bunch of different you know like tiny islands and really narrow waterways.

So you kind of have to navigate through it quickly.

And there's also like these

like

you know, love graftian beasts that pop up that that will try to kill you as you're trying to do your fishing.

And the whole quest you're doing there is there's a stranded aviator who all of his airmen have been killed, and he wants you to retrieve their dog tags and also try to kill these monsters that are inhabiting the mangrove with explosives.

So it's like everything,

basically, the thing is like you're being pursued on all sides, and then you don't have a lot of room to maneuver.

But yeah, there isn't necessarily any time pressure, except for the fact that at the end of each day, you have to get back to harbor because if you're out too late,

a big eye appears at

at the top of your HUD.

And then you start to see hallucinations that manifest themselves in the game world and can damage your watercraft.

I will say that is the best part of the game is that shit is cool.

The sort of madness and the sort of like barometer of madness with the eye.

specific it starts turning like silver once you get really panicky you you do start hallucinating you see ships in the distance that you're like oh this must be a friendly ship and you find out it's like a weird sort of angler fish that attacks you.

It's so cool.

That

aspect of the game is so well done.

I really, I really, really love that part of the game.

Yeah, that shit's awesome.

I love it.

Wait,

can I ask a question that is not me being like, I didn't get any,

so

I stayed up days at a time in the game and

like NPCs would be like, whoa, you need to sleep, but like, nothing was happening to my boat or anything.

What?

Really?

Yeah.

What, what, like, were you just, did you dock and did you have any time pass, or were you just like out at sea the whole time continuously?

Uh, I'm not sure.

I mean, there were definitely multiple days in the game where I didn't sleep.

So you reached, it basically the clock because you know, I had, I, I did some all-nighters, and I believe I believe what happens is that once you hit daylight, your sanity meter starts to reset.

So, it's like more the day-night cycle than like actually getting a certain amount of sleep.

You can just avoid the hallucinations in the water, though, can't you?

Yeah, so that's part of the kind of the push-pull of it of like if you want to like try to go out because there's certain fish you can only catch at night.

So, if you want to try to stay out later, uh, and you can do that, but it's certainly the safer move to dock and to rest.

Okay.

Well, you you guys were talking a little bit ago about

like mechanics you kind of wish were in the game.

And I was thinking of one that I thought would be good, which was

it would be in the similar style to like, not like a full-on, like, obviously there's like a rhythm element to this game, which I is already sort of like my favorite type of thing.

But if there was like, you know, in Tony Hawk games, when you can do like a grab or a grind and there's like this like meter that you have to sort of keep the balance like in the middle.

And if you go to one side or the other, you could fall or fail.

If there was a meter like that in this game and there were like perfect storm type waves as also another impediment in the game

during maybe the nighttime even,

that could be cool where you could have to keep your vessel upright.

during these really rocky waters or something.

That could have been cool.

Not that.

Maybe your vessel is like a big flat sort of surface like it's kind of like longer than it is wide yeah and instead of something on it instead of wearing like

fishermen's clothes you're wearing like etnies or something and right

yeah yeah yeah you could be darth maul

can i do a like a nick and matt style joke

I thought when you said you uh what kind of mechanic you wanted in the game that you were going to say Sid from Final Fantasy 15,

too funny.

That's the issue.

Yeah, that's kind of the thing.

It was too funny.

Okay.

It's okay.

So

I think, yeah,

I don't know.

I think by and large, the approach they took to the fishing, I think the fishing feels good.

I agree that, like, yeah, and then as I said earlier, I wish it heightened more and I wish it kind of went in different directions, but I do feel like it's largely fun to fish.

And I do think the thing that we haven't touched on really that I think is, again, one of the cooler things, cooler elements here when it gets into the horror side is

there are certain so that you'll be, you'll be picking like a collecting one type of fish.

So, you know, whatever, like you're...

You're going and you're fishing

like flounder.

You're finding flounder.

But then among the flounder, there will appear an aberration.

And so like, you know, based on a certain frequency, you'll pull out like a Cyclopian flounder that will look like a flounder, but it will also be like this distorted, sort of gnarled,

horrific version of it.

And part of your part of the

things that will happen with the various quests is you'll have to find different aberrations of these, and they also sell for more.

But like, I love the design of all of those.

I, I just loved how like nasty, like a, like, you know, like a, a, a, a distorted, like, boil-covered mullet looked like it all looked adequately uh horrifying and then

and it was also just always satisfying like the little bit of sound like you'd get like a different sound effect that would play and when you'd catch one of them uh and they'd have like some great flavor text for what they were exactly i always thought i thought that was a very satisfying element yeah there was i mean there there's a really good serotonin dopamine loop in this game of

catch your fish bring them in,

get a tiny bit of an upgrade, catch your fish, bring them in, get a tiny bit of an upgrade.

Like that stuff was so good.

And like catching these fucked up fish would give you sometimes more money than, and you'd be like, fuck yeah.

Or you'd be like, oh shit.

Okay.

I've got a

part of it is

Resident Evil 4 style inventory management.

There's a ton of that.

There's so much of that.

A grid on your boat that you align your fish in so you can fish like complementary fish shapes and then pack your boat full of fish and bring them in and get your cash and upgrade a little bit.

Like that was awesome.

Like I literally did that for days.

And also

I

um

the first thing I did before I went to any of the other islands was uh

or I went to I went to one I went to my after I got to my first island and research chips were available from the harbor uh I was like oh and the chips are only money well I can do that so I would just like fish get money dump them like dump them into research and the first thing I did from my boat was unlock the giant fast engine

I'd like got got all the way through the skill tree so to speak of upgrading your engine to the fastest possible engine.

So I had like the jet engines on my first boat.

Whoa.

Which was kind of.

Wow.

Before expanding the hole?

Yeah,

because the jet engines are only a single square and the speed stacks.

So you can get...

Like you can fill all of your available engine squares with jet engines and race your little boat around, which is pretty great.

The thing that I'm loving such a Heather Min-Max way of hunting this game.

Exactly.

Well, I also like, because I think we probably started playing it a little bit before Heather did.

And while I started playing it at the start of the month, I was certain we'd be having a completely different conversation this time

as a recording because I started playing it and I was convinced Heather is going to hate this.

I was like, this is not the type of thing.

But now that you were talking about it, I'm like, the game is kind of, there is a sort of combat element to it that's not combat, but it is.

You know what I mean?

Like the fishing is combat.

And like that feels like combat.

Yeah.

You got to go like you find, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to up.

So after I upgrade my fucking, my little racing engine, then I'm going to like upgrade my fish reels, my reels all the way.

Yes.

So I can catch those big boys out in the sea.

Yeah.

And then you could only fit one of them on the boat.

Go in and out of the, of the harbor with my one shark.

And I guess be like, here's my shark.

Yeah.

And I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised because you do like upgrades and you do like

trying to figure out like, you don't love puzzles and this doesn't have that, but I was just like with the going back and forth of it all.

And like.

I guess the inventory management is like kind of like the best.

That's the most heather thing too.

Like trying to figure that out as the most.

Yeah.

No.

If I can, if fast boat kill fish,

why do you need any other things in this game?

You don't need the story.

You don't need the islands.

Fast boat, kill fish.

That's the game.

Yeah.

You know, I do want to say to Heather, your point, the killing of the fish aspect, there, there's an element of the game where it tells you how many fish there are in that, in that little thing.

Oh, yeah.

High, low, or like whatever, sparse.

And then you like deplete.

You can deplete sort sort of that zone.

Yeah.

And I, to me, and I might be wrong here, but the connotation feels like you shouldn't exhaust like a little fishing spot.

Like to deploy, to like deplete it is like not good.

And that's just me as an environmentalist being like, I have to be careful about not fishing too much because I don't want to run out of fish for later.

But then

there is no consequence to running running out of fit.

Like fish, like

they regenerate the next day or something.

And then I was like, oh,

strip mine each fishing spot and dump those fish off so that your boat can go as fast as it can.

Right.

And I just wish there was an element of like, if you deplete

this part, like you can't, either you can't get any more fish in that area or

another kind of fish will show up.

Like you were saying earlier, that's like all, all mutated fish or something like that.

That, that individual spawn point will be like that will go away for a while so like if you deplete it it's like you you you kind of can't harvest fish i mean that that's my understanding of it right um and so like you want to like you don't want it to get below low uh but honestly but there's so many fishing spots and again so many ways like you like Crab pots don't deplete an area.

You know, the net will always be able to dredge fish no matter where you're going.

So yeah, you're never really at an issue where it's, it's a roadblock.

But also I think just like the developers were at kind of a, I think they were kind of in a

spot where they're like, well, I don't want to make this game impossible or unfinishable.

So yeah, it more becomes like an ethical concern in terms of how you want to role play your fishermen.

And for me, I was kind of like, I don't want to fucking strip mine the ocean.

That makes, I feel like I'm doing something wrong.

You also ultimately get some Lovecraftian powers.

You get like some spells as you get those from the collectors you progress.

And one of them is to

just every fish in sight just joint just comes onto your boat and all of those spots are permanently depleted so you're just like basically like you know just pulling everything out from the ocean uh with uh with spiritual tentacles all at once um so yeah you and and that feels like a thing you shouldn't do and that also drop quickly drives you mad

um do go to the places with the biggest fish the ones that take the longest to pull up fucking hit that power bring bring those motherfuckers back to the boat, put them,

cash them out, upgrade your engines.

Did any of us, okay, this was something I wanted to do and didn't.

Did any of us go to the edge of the map?

Because there's like a circle around the map and it's pretty far out at sea.

And I didn't go out there just because I was trying to race through the story since I started it after you guys.

And I wonder what was out in the middle of the the ocean away from all the islands.

Yeah, I didn't because the islands are all kind of at the corners of the map.

And there's not really a reason.

Like, I don't, I actually don't even know if it's a globe or a cylinder or if it, if it, the oceans connect or if you have a double-decker.

You could do it right now live on the show.

Like, I could just go up my controller and do it and tell you.

Yeah,

all right.

Let's do it.

Nice.

You guys, you guys keep chatting.

I'll be right there.

Let's see.

I think the character design of all the NPCs, it's like it reminds me of Darkest Dungeon, and I wouldn't be shocked if I drew some inspiration from that.

But yeah, they're all kind of like angular, and I don't know what the name of the art technique is for, just they've got like this blotchy quality to them.

They look very geometric, but, and, and distorted.

Yeah.

Uh, but yeah,

I really like that.

I really like how it looks.

I was going to say that the people look weird, but I don't know if you got to the part with the dog.

Yeah.

Like find a dog, and the dog is really unsettling.

It's got red eyes, and it's like a really thin dog.

I know you, you're supposed to like think it's cute, but I was like, I don't want this dog in my boat.

Get

out of here.

He looks fucked up.

But I did rescue the dog and I did give him to the researcher.

Same.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Me too.

So you're not a monster.

You didn't toss the dog overboard.

You didn't turn it into chum.

Wait, can you?

Edna's reloading reloading her save right now.

The characters too, or like the game, rather, like none of the characters are voiced, but I feel like they're a little, like, hmm.

Yeah.

All right.

Those go like a long way.

I like those.

Yeah.

Who was your favorite NPC?

Hmm.

I like the old mayor.

Really?

Yeah.

You find this fucking twisted old man marooned on a deserted island, and he's like, I'm the real mayor.

And he's like, oh, boy, all right, what's going on here?

No, I thought that was, I like that, and I like that, how he ties into the larger narrative.

And then also, I don't know, I mean, the lighthouse keeper is appropriately

mysterious.

I will say that, like, probably the traveling fisherman is the useful NPC because you can actually, you know, the story.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But

I don't know.

I liked, of the, the, like,

story characters, I mean, maybe it's just because I was like, they were sort of early on and I liked them.

I did kind of, I liked the brothers.

I liked reuniting.

Oh, the two brothers.

And maybe it's because I have brothers, but I was like, I would hope that somebody would try to reunite us.

And then I'd give whoever dynamite or whatever.

I would say the number one, and this is something I forgot.

First off, I hated all the NPCs and I didn't want to talk to any of them.

They all were, they bored me.

I didn't care.

They bored.

I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just like, okay, yeah.

Great.

Fucking,

I don't care about your little like journey.

Like, I don't care about any of it.

I don't like your life.

Not varsity blues.

I did realize just now as I'm racing towards the edge of the horizon here,

something that I wanted to say about the game, which is that the most damage I did to my boat over and over and over again was

racing the engine using the

ability to race.

Haste.

Haste.

I used haste and blew up my engine so many times.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really hard, really hard to let off the gas.

Because it feels fun.

Like it feels human, you know?

But then you also like, if you're not looking where you're going, you could hit a rock

or something.

So, you're not,

you're not necessarily incentivized fully to only be looking at the meter for which haste

gets to the top.

But, like, the sides of the screen also start to get red.

Like, you're about to be taking on damage if you keep

hauling ass.

Well, it also drives you mad.

Yeah.

Like, all of these are like these magic, you know, unearthly powers you are getting from the collector and they from

his magic book.

and so they are all like if you can't you can only use them so much before the eye manifests itself yeah is that true yeah

even with the racing of your engine no yeah they all they all add to your mat to your insanity meter huh

where are you what are you doing right now heather you have to i'm just i'm just racing towards the edge of the map okay to tell us what it is that happens when you get to the edge of the map got it and here we go i'm finally at the edge.

Entering uncharted waters.

Turn back, it says.

Keep going.

Okay.

That's not going to stop you.

Great.

Okay.

Turn back.

Turn back.

It says.

Nothing.

Nothing's happening to my boat.

I'm just racing forward.

There don't look to be any

fish out here.

That's for sure.

There's no fish in uncharted waters.

There was, um,

there was this ATV video game that I used to play at my uncle's house when I was a kid.

I think it was for PlayStation 2.

And my thing would be that I would try to just go to the edge of

the playfield in any of the levels, and you would get there.

And

its solution for getting you away from there was it would just send you flying across the map.

Like, you would crash into it and it would just send you flying back to like the middle of the map.

It was so funny.

And I just thought that was so funny and fun.

And I would just, that's all I would try to do in that game.

Okay, I can tell you guys what happens.

Great.

All right, great.

You get eaten.

What?

Whoa.

You get eaten by a giant fish.

That's cool.

Like a big, a big fish eats you from behind.

So you don't even see it coming.

It just eats you.

And that's it.

I guess that's what happens when you go in uncharted waters.

Yeah, you're not supposed to go out there.

They told you to turn around.

That's

that's a bummer, but interesting.

I'm glad that there's something there.

There's consequences, yes, yes, exactly.

Yeah, uh, should we get in?

Should we progress into uncharted waters of our own and head into

spoiler country and talk about the end game a little bit?

Yard,

yard.

We be headed into spoiler country.

You bet, you don't want to be able to do it.

You believe in spoiler country.

You're in it.

Oh, my God.

That's good.

Just an episode of this podcast where Matt can only speak in trailer quotes.

You wait and see.

Wait a little.

We got Talk Like a Pirate Day coming up.

So we're going to talk.

We'll talk about the end of the story a little bit.

So if you don't want that spoiled, you can jump ahead to, I don't know, do you want to put a time code in here, Matt?

I I don't know how to do that.

So just skip ahead.

Skip ahead a little bit.

So, okay.

So

what ends up happening is you have this character, the collector, and he and all of the main quest lines go through him.

He has a different artifact that he needs you to retrieve from each of the different sort of sets of islands.

You gradually get all five of them.

You go to the Gale Cliffs, you go to the Stellar Basin,

you go to the Twisted Strand, and you go to the Devil's Spine where there's lava, and

you do the various quests in each of these, and then you retrieve all these artifacts, you bring them back, and then you have a decision point where you can do one of two endings.

And I did them both, and I like that this game makes it so that you don't have to do a bunch of bullshit to get both endings.

You can just kind of see them both, and it gives you a save where you can like make that make that choice again because that's what the user wants to do.

I love that.

I love that decision.

It's it's it's very very user-friendly.

And I think both endings are good.

I think both endings are satisfying.

And there isn't like a

like positive ending really, but they both give like an interesting bit of narrative closure.

I

okay,

so

Because I was just like, fucking, I want fish.

I don't care.

I want fish and money.

I don't want any of story I read all I collected all the fucking you know floating bottles and read them and I was like okay this lady's got a fucking problem I don't care uh and then

the ending of the game I was like oh uh

okay

and I was a little bit disappointed because I'm tired of the trope of woman being motivator in a video game.

And I think there are games that have done it well, which I won't won't mention because I don't want to spoil those games.

I don't want you to be in the middle of spoiler country for Dredge and hear spoiler country for an entirely different game.

But then there are games like this where it's just like, but what, why?

Why?

You know, I'm pretty sure that Braid has been out for long enough now that I can spoil Braid.

And Braid tells the story of you trying to, you know, maybe get back together with an ex-girlfriend.

Or so it's been like a deck.

it's two decades almost since I've played that fucking game.

And I was like, okay, this is a nice twist on the Princess in a Tower trope of Mario that we've all like kind of gotten used to.

But with this, I was like,

like, Shadow of the Colossus has done it.

Like, there've been decades of games where it's like,

you know, oh, it's your dead wife.

And I was really bummed out

in Dredge when that happened.

I, it, it almost made me angry.

Because I was like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

And

I turned off and I was like, I'll never think about this game ever again because the ending sucked.

Which ending did you get?

Like, no, the fucking, she comes back to life and then the Leviathan destroys the town.

And I was like, okay, great.

Boo.

How awesome.

I thought it was cool.

I will say that, yes, obviously an overused trope.

Hey, we're talking about God of War.

That's a fucking dead wife game.

I mean, it's just like,

it's

Kratos is like kind of like the ultimate wife guy.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I guess I, you know, I probably

give it a pass.

I give it more of a pass partly because of my own biases, but also because of like,

I think there's a...

It's because it's kind of anchored in this sort of like Lovecraftian genre.

It's like it kind of felt like it's like fitting with what that sort of, what that sort of story would be.

But I do understand the point.

I will say that the way that it resolves, which is, yes, you go, the collector's like, we can do this ritual and you go out there and you can bring your dead wife back to life, but that results in the basically effectively the world being destroyed by this gigantic eldritch horror.

I think that is a great visual payoff.

And I think that's, that ties in nicely with what the game is doing thematically, which is about like talking about how the sea drives one mad.

And then the other ending, the quote-unquote good ending, is, I think, like a little bit less satisfying, but still also cool.

Well, you know what?

It's the actual ending itself is less satisfying, but the setup to it is you go to punch the collector because you're like, I know the truth.

I've talked to the lighthouse keeper.

I've talked to the old mayor.

I know what's actually going on in this world.

You go to punch the lighthouse keeper.

Your fist shatters in a mirror.

You are the fucking collector.

And you realize that it's been you the whole time who have been driving yourself mad.

And that's like a cool, like, like, that's a cool little bit of twist.

And then you end up

sacrificing yourself from the sea to escape this prison you built from yourself.

That's great.

That's cool.

Yeah, you get eaten by giant fish, which is what happens if you go to uncharted waters.

You're not

he, that's like skipping to the credits.

It's just like

that's how you speedrun this thing.

Yeah, speedrun the game.

I beat it.

Yeah, go on.

I wish wish there were

i wish there were more rare fish

i wish there was more fish that like it's it's funny to compare this game to final fantasy 11 an mmo but there are fish that you can only catch like once a month during a full moon between the hours of like one and seven a.m and like the

the that game is not a fishing game so i do wish that there was like a fish that you heard about where it's like, hey, there's a, there's a, a blue-eyed rock coral fish that you can only catch in your literal calendar month on a, on the first Tuesday of the month.

Because I'd be like, okay, I'm in.

Maybe there is that in this game, but nobody talks about it.

So maybe there isn't.

There are, there are a ton of fish that I didn't like go after because you don't need them for progression.

I think, honestly, like it, it's so, I think there are, you know, if you look at the list of fish that you can get in the game, there might be some like that that are available.

Shut up.

Maybe I can.

No, no, but what I was going to say is, like, to your point, I, I didn't feel the need to go after them.

And I wonder if that's partly because,

you know, again, the side quests aren't super interesting, but also, like, I think I was playing on Steam, and I don't give a shit about Steam achievements.

And I think if I was playing on, like, Xbox, you know, or something where I, where I track the achievements a little bit more, PlayStation, I maybe might have done, tried to catch more of those fish just to try to 100%.

There's no, I don't think there's an achievement for catching the exotic fish in the game, which I was expecting.

I was fully like, okay, because I caught all the exotic fish and I was like, all right, here it is, the achievement, and nothing.

And also like the, you get like research parts as like rewards to catching the exotic fish, which, as we said before, it's not too hard to get the research parts.

So it really could just, I'm sorry.

Yeah, you could just buy them.

And I think the cool thing about catching the exotic fish is just the aesthetic of them.

They look

really cool.

Yeah, they look awesome.

Yeah.

Oh, wait.

So I just looked up the rarest fish in the game

and it's considered to be the gazing shark.

And I caught one of those.

No.

Like, it's, it's the, it's the mutated hammerhead.

Oh, yeah.

So that's not that rare, is it?

That's, I mean, it's not

like I would hunt anytime I saw sharks, I would, I would fish them until they were were done.

So

I don't know.

I definitely caught a regular ass hammerhead.

I liked and disliked this game.

That's my take.

I think this game is pretty awesome, especially considering it coming from

out of nowhere, from an indie small team.

I think it's just like such a cool premise.

I think it looks and sounds great.

And I think it starts off with such a bang that definitely worth playing, especially if like, hey, if it shows up on games pat game pass or uh it turns up on sale and this is kind of dumb to say at this point because we're in spoiler country so if you haven't played this game why would you be listening to this but um that said of of the indie uh ocean based games i still of this year i still prefer dave the diver but i am glad that we played this uh at a black me too me too like i like i'm i've i've grumped a lot on this but i

it was i mean again that first

that first third is so satisfying when you're fishing upgrading, fishing, upgrading.

It's so clicky.

Yeah.

Like you're like, oh, I'm really snapped into this.

It's fun how everything kind of locks in together.

And, and, and

there's that element of just like, oh, one more day.

Oh, let's just do one more day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think also, you know, when Matt, you told me about the game that we were playing, I was like, oh, a fishing sim?

Yikes.

I don't know.

I don't know about this.

It's going to be weird.

But I mean, it's engaging.

The gameplay is simple.

That's the big thing.

It's not a complicated game.

It's very simple and easy to pick up and just play.

It's not alienating in a way where you have to know a bunch of rules.

You don't have to know the story at all.

The gameplay alone, if you take away the story, if you take away the aesthetic, the gameplay is.

very fun and again, like addicting.

Super clicky, you know?

Super like, yeah.

It hits you.

And I think also the other aspect of it too, that I really like is, you know, the horror aspect of it is like, is the game success, does it have to be a horror game?

And it doesn't.

It, it, it works just as well if it was like, I don't know, an Animal Crossing game, I think.

However, there is something really cool about

the Lovecraftian horror genre is

successful because it's the unnamable horror.

It's like hard to describe.

It's like, that's what it is.

It's like the nameless one.

It's like

a Cthulhu is scary because like you can't visualize how scary and just massive Cthulhu is.

And I think there's something really cool about catching the aberrations and their descriptions of it.

It feels like, oh, I can't conceptualize this.

What do you mean?

Like,

there's like a fish that's like stuck in a vortex.

Like, what?

But you caught one, right?

And to me, there's something really, really fun about like trying to visualize these freakish monsters.

Because guess what?

The sea is fucking insane.

Fish.

Have you seen fish?

Fish are fucked up.

Fish.

It's nasty.

Deep sea fish are the most fucked up and they're real, right?

So you're taking real fucked up fish and then making mutant versions of those fucked up fish.

Scary, real scary.

To me, in that way,

the reality of how fucked up fish are and just like the sea is, that was what was the most effective for me.

I was like, oh, yeah, I'm never going to go in the deep ocean.

Fuck that.

Uh-uh.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

I totally, completely agree.

Actual ocean, very scary.

James Cameron, bravest man on earth.

Yes.

I have snorkeled and I enjoy that quite a bit.

But I don't, I have no desire to submerge.

I have no interest in the freaky ones with the lights or anything like that.

No, thank you.

Well, hey, those were our thoughts.

Now it's time for the you play of our WePlay U-Play.

It's your review crew, the Ryu crew on Dredge.

Ha, Dulcin.

Yarr.

Okay, so these are some uh reviews from our discord, discord.gg/slash get played.

Uh, so here we here we go.

This first one is from Puffin Stuff.

Hi, Puffin Stuff.

Puffin stuff.

Nice.

Nice.

I loved all the fucked up fish you catch and upgrading your boat.

Just wish the world was bigger.

Four out of five.

Okay.

They gave a score.

This one's from Sea Money.

Simoni.

I see money.

I see money.

Nice.

Nice.

In the game, I got real paranoid and almost hit rocks at night that were definitely not there during the day 10 out of 10.

oh

that is that is another cool thing that happens as you start to hallucinate is that new like you know obstacles appear in the environment yeah did you did when you were going mad there's you can go um you can press your fog horn

And then you can hear another fog horn sounding.

And then you can keep hitting it.

And it's like a little conversation.

And then one time while I was playing it, I kept doing that.

And then all these like ghost ships kept coming.

And I was like,

it was cool.

That part was cool.

I saw like a ghost pirate ship.

Yeah.

And I was like, that's fucking great.

Really, really cool.

This next one's from Koopa Troopa.

Hi, Koopa Troupa.

Hey, Koopa Troopa.

Nice.

Nice.

This game wouldn't have been on my radar if it wasn't for this.

So I'm glad to have the WePlay You Play to give it a shot.

I think it's a great example of a concept that would be amazing in a sequel with some refinements.

Interesting.

Yeah, that's a good point.

You know, I kind of felt the same way about Cult of the Lamb, which came out last year.

And that was a game that was just like, oh, this is a good, this is a full game, but also kind of a prototype, hopefully, for a sequel that really figures it out.

Yep.

This next one's from Bulgasaur.

Hi, Buldasaur.

Nice.

Bulgasaur?

Nice.

The art, especially the aberrations, rules.

Moody atmosphere.

This game has vibes.

That's what you said, Matt.

It's got vibes.

It's got good vibes.

This one's from...

Bad vibes?

Spooky vibes.

Hey, vibes are vibes.

I'll take what you can get.

Good at being spooky.

Yes.

This next one's from one of our mods, Ted Cord.

Thanks, Ted Cord, for being here, Ted.

Very nice.

Very nice indeed.

Overall, I enjoyed this game, but I felt let down by the lack of story and especially the ending.

What?

Let down by the ending.

Interesting.

Let down by the lack of story.

I felt like there was too much story.

Well, you know what?

It is like the main narrative doesn't really advance when you're at these other islands.

It's like you're kind of there and you're doing your own, like, you know, you're reuniting the brothers or you're aiding the researcher in their mission.

You're kind of like are doing a different thing

and then you're retrieving an artifact and then you're coming back.

And so, so it's really just bracketed with the, the, the, the first act and the, the ending in terms of where you're actually finding out what's going on.

I have a question about the game.

Yeah.

There are parts where you go on, you see these like black stones and you

ask you to put your hand in and sometimes you get like a premonition or something, but sometimes it says it doesn't respond.

What is that supposed to be?

Is that tied to the story at all or no?

You know what?

I never followed that up and figured out what was going on there.

I just sort of like, all right, this is something that...

So I should look up what actually happens.

And sometimes there's some like crab monster that shows up.

Oh, yeah.

I saw I saw the crab monsters.

Yes.

But I assumed that, oh, I'm going to get something where I come back to these black rocks and something happens, but I have to get that thing.

And then, no, the game ended.

So I don't know.

I think it's like a,

I assumed it was maybe tied in

to

retrieving stuff for the hooded figures, but maybe not.

No, because I did, I did that.

Okay, I'm looking looking it up right now.

Apparently, you just have to be like, your panic has to be really high when you touch them, and that's when you'll get visions.

Oh,

interesting.

But they don't really...

That is interesting.

What are the visions?

The vision?

Like, story?

It's just like you, it's like, it describes a Lovecraftian sort of event.

Yeah, it tells you something, some context of something that happened to wherever you are.

I got a couple of quick ones real quick.

This next one's from Raccoon.

Hi, Raccoon.

Hi, Raccoon.

Nice.

Nice.

Dredge really reaffirmed my fears of the ocean.

Yeah, absolutely.

Ocean.

Ocean scary.

Very scary.

This next one is from Z Wrench.

Hi, Z Wrench.

Hi, Z Wrench.

Nice.

Spooky in Boats is always going to hit.

It's like chocolate and peanut butter.

Eight out of ten.

Wow.

Nice.

Oh, chocolate and peanut butter, only eight out of ten.

Yeah, exactly.

Maybe that's like a dog's rating.

Love the peanut butter.

Chocolate.

Not so keen.

Yeah, I'm going to take this Reese's down too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then finally, from Not the Toilet.

Noise.

Nice.

Can we make them a mod?

Yeah, Not the Toilet.

You're hired.

Not the Toilet.

Excellent game.

It was like a box of donuts.

Full of tasty loops.

Oh, wow.

Oh, it is very.

Got a far scump here.

Way of saying that.

Okay.

The game of Dredge is like a box of donuts.

So you're calling like a donut a loop in that point.

I guess, I guess, I guess it's a loop.

A closed loop.

It's an etigo.

Is there ever not a closed loop?

I don't know.

I don't think they're, yeah, I don't think there are any donuts that have, they're like a U-shape or any.

Well, and then they have the ones that are bars, right?

They have like the bars.

That's true.

Yeah.

Is it a loop if it is not closed?

Isn't it a U?

I think you can have an open loop.

We'll never get to the answer to this.

And actually, not the toilet.

You're fired.

That was like a really crazy thing.

You put us through.

And

you really gave us something to think about.

And that's not, we don't do that here.

Wow.

Quick Rise and Fall.

That's this week's Get Play.

Our Engineering is by Alex Gonzalez, Dead Air Alex G on Twitter and Instagram.

Check out our paywalled show, Get Animated, Heather, where we're still watching the melancholy of Harui Suzumiya.

If you were anywhere in the middle of the 2000s, you heard the name Haruhi Suzumiya.

We are watching season one, season two, and the movie of the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and the disappearance of Harihi Suzumiya.

I believe we're finally wrapping up season two.

We're in the last five episodes of season two.

And then we'll be watching the movie.

So come to patreon.com slash get played, even though the show is called get animated, we are get played, played uh and check that out stitcher premium is dead it's fucking dead you can't get it there on it's it's you can't get it on stitcher premium anymore it's only at patreon.com slash get played if you want to listen to new episodes and our entire back catalog of uh anime watch-alongs uh our guest today oscar montoya oscar one of our favorites thank you so much for making time for us thank you for playing

class i love it what what a what a hoot uh do you have anything you'd like to plug uh just follow me on social media at ozimo o-z-z-y-m-o on Twitter and Instagram.

Oscar did a really funny, great, great show for Earwolf Presents called Tri-Gaze with Mono Agapian.

And

it's so funny and so great.

I was obsessed with it.

Check it out.

Oh my God, I love yours and Waisaki's.

It's so good.

Thank you.

That is.

That one is great.

Thank you.

So these are both in the Earwolf Presents feed.

You can find both of these shows.

So just search for Earwolf Presents on your podcast app of choice and uh and catch all that oscar and mono try to understand straight things and it is so funny it's

i guess it's so good to the funniest

oh um

i feel like this is my job when it's when it comes to this point in the show when we have when we have a guest uh because i just know that like

you guys you probably just can't handle it and that's it's just like a tough thing to do and i think it's fine that i take this on um just for us as as a unit as a triforce of friendship but um oscar um

it it brings me no great it brings me no pleasure to do this to you at this time but uh oh you got played

wow nice