Diablo IV with Jon Gabrus

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Hey, man, you done plow in your field yet or you still got a lot of stuff?

Well, you know,

when

the work's never done, right?

You're always got some work plows.

Never done.

That's sort of the beauty of plowing.

Hey, uh,

you want to talk a little goss?

Oh,

bitch, dish.

Why not?

Yeah, let's go.

Let's do it.

Okay.

First up, you know, the fishmonger's wife?

Yeah.

Oh, word is that she has a little side piece.

Isn't that wild?

Yeah.

No, I have...

You can tell.

You can tell.

You can know.

You see them together.

You see the fishmonger.

It's like, why is he waiting?

It doesn't make any sense.

What is going on here?

It doesn't make any sense.

Let's see.

Also,

oh, I heard that,

you know,

all the grain we got at that storehouse where all the grain is in.

I heard the fishmonger's been going in there to fucking

pound off.

The fishmonger is Jackson.

That's part of the reason there's the fission between the two of them.

That's part of the reason they obviously,

you know, her needs aren't being met.

That's why she has this side piece.

Meanwhile, he can't fulfill the needs because he's fucking fucking pounding off

in the shed.

He's using all of his energy.

And also in the grain shed, everyone uses that energy.

That's where all the grain comes from.

Oh, also,

Diablo's back.

I was hoping that I was going to be able to get to tell you this, but you know.

I heard that Diablo's back.

I heard that the reason the fishmonger has been pounding off in the

in the grain shack

is because Diablo is like making him do it.

And that's that's kind of the fucked up thing that like it kind of like we're like kind of joking possessed by some sort of demon we're like joking that he's back and that's like kind of funny that he's back but actually it's like really fucked up because you know these things you know shit rolls downhill right he's jacking off now so now his marriage is ruined it's a whole thing But you know, maybe the wife is happier, so it's like tough to say if actually it is worse.

She's getting railed.

I just can't believe Diablo's back.

I thought we got rid of him like 50 years ago.

I was like, okay, and now he's back.

We're just starting to just finish rebuilding.

And now Diablo is here to muck everything up.

What frustrates me about him, and I can say this to you because I think, you know, we're cool.

You're not going to go ahead and say this to him.

Oh, yeah, no, 100%.

If you're just going to come back every time we get rid of you, just stay, dude.

Don't fucking, you know, come over here, get your fucking, you know, ass, you know, ripped apart, get walloped by us.

We're always the ones having to do this.

And then come back.

Just stick around.

Yeah, you think like the Archangel Tyriel puts him back into his place.

Like, he'd just eventually be like, I just give up.

Just, you know, you don't need to look for the key to hell and try to unleash your minions back to scour a sanctuary.

Just fucking let us embarrassing.

It's embarrassing.

He just wants attention.

And it's just, you know, it's tough to do.

He does.

That's what it is.

It's like

a compulsion.

It's like pathological.

Like, he needs the attention.

And, you know, I thought we had him.

You remember a few years ago when the

county barrister uh had those charges of obstruction of justice he brought up on Diablo, and I was like, Oh my god, we're gonna get him because he because remember he stole all those scrolls, he was keeping all those scrolls in the trial of the century.

Do I remember?

Yeah, I was like, Oh my god, they're gonna lock him up, he's fucking done.

And no, he fucking wriggles his way out of it.

I don't know how he does it.

I'm just trying to think if there's any more gossip.

Oh, God, the biggest thing is that Diablo's back, and that's sort of like the main thing.

Diablo's back.

Oh, my family got killed by skeletons.

What?

And fucking, fucking skeletons came in with like a with crossbows.

Just fucking murked them all.

While we're talking, my wife, she left.

This big...

It's like big tree.

Uh-huh.

Came in and kicked my ass.

It's tough when you try.

You can't.

It's just, you know, there's a reason there's weight classes in combat sports.

Yeah, you can't, you just can't go up against one of those big tree creatures.

Mono Mono.

I tried hitting it.

Yeah, no, you're just going to get a fistful of splinters.

That's exactly what happened.

Cried right in front of him.

Fuck my wife.

Anyway,

I'm going to town portal over to the graveyard to visit my family's tomb.

I'm going to.

Nice talking to you.

I'm going to go to the

I guess this grain shack.

Okay, all right.

We socket skulls into amulets and explode corpses to make more corpses as we discuss Diablo 4 this week on Get Blade.

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

It's time to get played.

I'm Nick Weiger, along with my co-host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

And welcome back to Get Played.

Heather Ann Campbell is, I was out last week.

She's out this week.

She was passing in the night.

But we'll all be back next week to discuss this month's We Play, You Play Street Fighter VI that's coming a week from today on Monday, June 26th.

And we also have a special guest for that, Matt.

Yeah, a very special guest.

And let's just say.

You're going to want to hear this one.

You're going to want to hear all their guests today is also special.

I got to say.

Hey, man, that's absolutely right.

Just as you said that, our guest turned off his camera.

Special?

Fuck you.

Just turn his camera off because he's crying.

I don't know how to handle compliments based on my childhood.

For all our listeners out there, we do want to hear your thoughts on SF6.

Send them into our Discord.

We'll read some of those next week.

And, Matt, I want to hear your thoughts before we intro our guest on a game that you possibly talked about last week.

I was going to listen to the episode, but then you and Heather both told me not to.

Yeah,

don't worry about it.

Okay.

But on last week's episode, I'm not sure if you talked about this or not, but it's a friend.

Like people think of Matt, they think of, you know, Tony Hawks Pro Skater, Kingdom Hearts, Pokemon, but there's another franchise on your Mount Rushmore, Prince of Persia.

And Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown, was announced, and I think it looks pretty sick.

You think I didn't fucking talk about that last week, dude?

The hell's the matter with you?

Of course I talked about it i said they fucking that at because they announced it at the at summer game fest um

and

it's a new uh prince of purges style or your prince of purga game in the uh you know 2d platformer style uh and i'm very excited about it every other announcement after that i was not excited i was just like okay whatever That was honestly a stand-up for me.

I watched the trailer and then I also watched a gameplay like talk over video.

It just sort of,

I really like the aesthetic.

I really like that sort of, you know, two and a half D engine they got there.

And just like that kind of gameplay.

I mean,

I play those sorts of games so much.

Like just like a platformer, a Metroidvania, you know, like a game, a platform game that's 2D that also has a lot of like exploration and light RPG elements.

Like I love that shit.

So that's a day one for me.

especially coming in January 2024, which is where that was.

First game of the year.

First game of the year.

Why not?

Yeah.

I'm very excited about that.

I'm also like, just that Ubisoft is like, hey, let's make this.

Let's do this with this IP because they seem so committed to doing one type of game.

Yeah.

And so for them to actually make this, I don't know.

That looks successful.

I do think it's funny that they couldn't quite get their hand, like, get their heads around the Sands of Time remake, but they're like, oh, here's this other thing.

This is

we made a new game while we're working on the remake.

Sorry, we delayed that for the fourth time.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to that.

our guest today from his podcast high and mighty in action boys returning to the show john gabris is here hi gabris yo what up fam thanks for having me back i'm stoked i i've been wanting to come back on the show been feeling under um gamed personally but i'm just like not getting i'm not getting as i'm like six months behind everyone maybe nine months behind everyone but this is a game i've been looking forward to it kind of surprised me that it's coming out and then when you asked me to come on, I just like had an excuse to pump some hours in.

Hell yeah.

It's been feeling fucking good, man.

So thank you so much.

This means a lot.

Oh, my God.

Anytime you want to come on, just tell us.

Yeah, we'll have you on anytime.

I'll tell somebody else that they have to fucking kick rocks.

I don't care.

Yeah.

He'll tell me.

I'll be like, all right, I'll get the fuck out of here.

Can you retroactively go back nine months?

I just beat God of War Ragnarok.

Like do like Disney's doing with French Connection and just

replace the entire episode, but don't tell listeners.

But yeah, here's it.

One, here's a new episode that

we didn't do a God of War-specific one.

And also, it came out months ago.

You missed it, actually.

Gaslight the entire audience.

This was our best episode.

Gabrier, the game we're going to talk about today, I think kind of slots into an episode of your podcast, High and Mighty, I guessed on back on your 420 special.

Ostensibly, we were supposed to talk about like marijuana and video games, getting into that flow state while high, while gaming.

I think like every time I guessed on your podcast, we instead just end up talking about like having diarrhea all the time.

Yeah,

to be fair, same when I guessed on your podcast.

And don't you worry, listeners.

You can play the Nintendo Switch with diarrhea, so get pumped.

I'm curious, We'll talk about DLFO in a little bit more depth in a second, but like, is this like the kind of game that you play while high?

Yes.

The thing that's fun is almost all games are.

I will say like slow-moving games to a lesser degree.

Like, you know, I love a Civ and shit like that.

Oh, yeah, hell yeah.

A little less fun when stoned.

These like kind of active games and getting off the computer and onto the PlayStation for me, because I was mostly playing PC ported games or Steam games on my iMac for so long.

But in the pandemic, I got myself a PS5.

And that was a real,

in the pandemic, I got myself a PS4 for the first time.

And I hadn't been on PS since PS2.

So I was really fucking into it and then upgraded to five.

So playing, smoking weed and playing games, not on your computer where you could easily open up a porn tab or start messaging someone or like realizing you got to to draft like a work email or something.

And for me, unfortunately, I'm apartment life.

Both me and my partner work from home.

So my gaming system is about a foot and a half to the right of where I'm currently sitting.

So it's not a huge separation, but going to the couch with the controller is just a vibe shift that, you know, pairs well with a volcano or a bong or something like that.

100%.

No, I'm like, you can, you can see my tableau on the webcam, but like I'm standing at my desk right now.

Behind me is the couch that I sit on.

And then on the wall there is my gaming TV.

So I get the exact same setup.

I just like move 90 degrees, basically.

Yeah, it's the exact same thing.

There's there, yeah.

My second monitor for my, for when I'm working and watching something on my, my second monitor is my play, also my PlayStation monitor.

It's amazing what a, what a, like a reset that does to you to just like change your orientation in the same room.

Because like I go from like stress to like relaxation and I'm, I'm moving just about, you know, four four feet.

It's it's so crazy, like the detachment you feel from work, especially since zooming, podcasts, and stuff is all here.

It does feel like that.

And getting a break from it, it's so funny where I'm like, I got to get off this screen and get onto a different one is like kind of like my entire vibe.

I got to get off my phone and put on a movie.

Like that's constantly what I'm, but in 2023, with my brain being broken like this, like a movie is the new book.

Like, you know, if I sit down and I watch a full movie, that's like trying to read a book to me.

Like, it's like with phones and life stress and high blood pressure, you know, all that shit.

Oh, yeah.

No,

I keep my phone out of reach.

Like, and I try to do it both when I'm gaming and when I'm when I'm watching a movie.

Just like, I'm going to totally engage with this piece of media right now.

And it, like, I don't know.

I find like I relax more and it's

better for my brain.

You mentioned movies, and it's been a while since you've been on.

And I did want to ask you about a movie because I know you've played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons.

You're like, you're like the the like one of the coolest guys i know but you're also like have a lot of like nerd culture uh in your background and and yeah and i know you've played a lot of dnd did you like dungeons and dragons on her among thieves i enjoyed it thoroughly me too i i knew i was going into like a kids movie you know like yeah and it's funny how like that's like a refreshing take on ip for some reason even though it's it's practically guardians of the galaxy with like dungeons instead of outer space

but I love Chris Pine.

And

the other thing that this movie did that no other movie does nowadays is not everyone was quippy, just Chris Pine.

Other funny stuff happened, but it came from being like a frightened sorcerer or a stoic barbarian.

Sure.

And so I dug it for that reason.

I dug it for like the, it got into some shit.

We met some halflings.

We saw a mimic.

We saw a fucking gelatinous cube, a

displacer beast, like a lot of cool shit like that.

And in my head, I'm picturing the EU being rather fucking cool because we don't necessarily have to follow these characters.

It's about like the land that they all exist in instead, like Forgotten Realms or whatever.

I think they're going off Forgotten Realms because they reference Elminster.

So that puts it in Forgotten Realms, which is kind of a beautiful universe.

And if we get more movies in that universe, but maybe we meet Chris Pine in some interaction or something like that.

It's a hopefully the next DD movie, I guess is what I'm saying, is not this cast in a different that'll bum me out i hope that what they learn from this is like stealing from the campaign idea like this is a module let's do another module in the world Yeah, it definitely felt like you were watching like a campaign come to life.

Like I would not be, I mean, I kind of fully expect them to make more movies with the same cast, but I hope that like you were saying, I hope they do expand it because, again, it's such a, it's such a lush world that you can do whatever in.

But also like a big part of what I liked about it is that it like, what you talked about, the quipping, like it wasn't taking taking the piss out of the IP.

You know what I mean?

It wasn't, like, making fun of Dungeons and Dragons.

We didn't have, you know, a bunch of fourth wall breaking jokes or stuff about, like, you know, like, all of them being nerds or something like that.

Let's roll again, boys.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, it, it, like, it, like, took the world, the reality they inhabited seriously.

And I don't know.

I mean, I was just like, I think we talked after I saw it.

I was like, I hope they make 10 of these.

Yeah, I'm into it.

Matt, you're a dork, but you're not really like a D ⁇ D dork.

I'm not like a good one.

Yeah, I'm kind of a dork.

No, no, you're like a young dork.

Yeah.

No paper and pencils for you.

You're like all middle.

Get that shit away.

I'll cut myself on the paper.

No, I've played some DD.

I have yet to see the movie, though, and I don't know why I haven't seen it yet.

It's on Paramount Plus now.

I could watch it at home.

Oh, shit.

I'm going to re-watch it for free.

I wouldn't pay to re-watch it, but no,

you shouldn't pay for it.

I guess it's not free.

It's $6 a month or whatever.

Well, if you have anything to see, Mayor of Kingstown.

Well, and you need to watch

all in the

family Stallone, too.

You gotta watch it.

Oh, yeah.

There you go.

I got Fubar, The Family Stallone, and an Arnold Doc all on streaming right now, and I couldn't give a rat's ass.

It's so funny.

It's like what I begged for as a child, and now it's just like, ugh.

I need to see the family dynamic of Sly Stallone.

Yeah, it's funny when you love someone, you're like, I'll see anything they do.

And you're like, wait, no, never mind.

Yeah, I don't know if I need to see him.

Like, I know how fucking remote works or something.

But no,

I should watch the movie.

It's been on my list to watch.

It's been on home video or, you know, where you can watch it at home for a while.

So

it's next in the queue.

But I'm glad it's good.

I would like to see them make more things like that because

it is just like.

You know, if there's like, it can be five Marvel movies a year.

One of them can be a D ⁇ D movie and that's fine.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

It's like, throw that on the fucking, we got two Star Wars, two Marvels, and a D D movie this year.

Fuck it.

Just like rat.

And like, that's...

This is so desperate.

I'm not even like begging for like auteurs to make like singular ideas.

I'm just like, oh, cool, fresh IP.

Yeah.

It's such a bummer.

People like that, like, Christopher Nolan's always going to make an Oppenheimer.

He's like, he's always going to do something that's like his own sort of singular thing.

Wes Anderson's always going to make something cute.

Are those the two guys who can still do that?

I mean, they're truly.

They're the two white guys that are allowed to make something on their own that aren't a property.

But, you know, a couple years from now, maybe Wes gets, you know, needs a couple, is strapped for cash and he makes the Grand Budapest Hotel 2 or something.

I saw

some headline that WB is trying to woo Nolan back.

Warner Brothers trying to woo Nolan back, get like movies again.

And like a dozen of the comments or responses, like, yes, we need another dark night and I'm like shut up no you're asking for the wrong thing like

oh we got legendary sushi chef back in it's like oh sick I want a fucking steak it's like no you fucking idiot

that headline is also confusing to me because I guess I just don't understand the particulars but they're like they're wooing him back with this check this residual check for like seven figures or something and I was like well That's his money.

Like, that's like, that's not like a big like.

He got a little boned with his tenant residuals because it never,

do, like, it didn't do movie ticket numbers, which is where, like, the real big back-end sharing hits.

So by it going to streaming, it kind of fucked him.

And he was like, I'm working with Warner Brothers, like, the fucking WB, and you guys are figuring out a way to just not put this in the movies.

And he's like one of the few guys making theater movies anymore.

For sure.

Yeah.

Thank God for Tom Cruise.

That's all I'm going to say.

Tom Cruise, Scorsese.

Even though Scorsese, his last movie was his newest movie is Apple and his last movie is Netflix.

It does feel funny that he's like, Give me $200 million, I'll give you a three-and-a-half-hour movie for your service, but you've got to put it in the theater too.

He's like, found a way to get Silicon Valley to finance him and fucking De Niro fucking around in old man makeup.

He's done with the one for you, one for me.

He's like, all for me, you make it, baby.

Yeah, all for me.

I tell you, it's good.

You get to put it on your dumb computer.

Let's go.

And I hate Marvel movies.

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Well, look, I have one more question for you, Gabris.

And this also is a question I'll put to you, Matt, which is, what are you playing?

Wow.

Wow.

Gabris, you mentioned earlier you played some God of War Ragnarok.

You're late to the party on that.

I think we were also texting that you played some Star Wars Wars Jedi Fallen Order.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

The first one.

I was going to jump off.

After God of War, the next game I was going to kick off was the Jedi games, but I guess there's two.

And someone told me, you should play through the first one because the stories are connected.

And I was like, oh, that's just the nerd thing I need to hear to activate my completionist spectrum mind.

I'm like, of course, I would never be able to enjoy the second one without playing the first one.

And so I've been trying to get through that.

But

my buddy reached out and was like, yo, for like an extra $30, you can have Diablo 4 now.

And I was like, oh, and I just was like, didn't, I was waiting for whatever the date was, but they're like, as of the sixth, you can have it or whatever day I got it, you can get it like early for a hundo instead of end.

You know, if you're, if you're going to live in a tiny apartment and own nothing and have no savings and no retirement, what are you going to do with a few extra bucks?

Get Diablo five days early.

So, so I've been on that.

And then I also, along the same lines, wanted to play the new Zelda, but I gave up on Breath of the Wild five minutes in on my Switch.

So I was like, oh, I'll do that.

And so I downloaded Breath of the Wild again.

I was going to start playing that on the Switch.

But when I got on the, I went to go use it when I was traveling and it needed to be updated.

Yeah, I had diarrhea on the plane.

I didn't get up to go to the bathroom.

Comfort plus, they just deal with it.

People are, you know, I was wearing a mask.

Didn't bother me too much.

You're fine.

But it couldn't get updated.

So I was like, fuck.

And then I just played this other game I love on the Switch, and then it got me accidentally hooked on it again.

I've been playing Monster Train a lot.

Oh, oh, yeah.

So I've heard a lot about Monster Train, and I've had people recommended it to me because

you like Slay the Spire?

Exactly.

Exactly.

People like you like this, play this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's exactly.

Because I loved Slay the Spire and got really addicted and accidentally had it on like three different platforms.

Like I had it on Steam on my Switch.

And then I was like, I got to play this on PlayStation.

You know, I was like getting it everywhere.

yeah um and someone was like oh you should try monster train and monster train is fun in in a similar way just with like uh cooler art i guess cooler character design

i gotta try it out at some point uh i mean i'm i'm just so overwhelmed because there have been so many new releases but i'm sure it would be like extremely my shit uh yeah i i think you can boy tears of the kingdom is a is a is a good one

because what you were just talking about of like i should play the first one before i play the second one and i was like because i'll just go into i've been playing uh Zelda Tears of the Kingdom in addition to Diablo 4, and I played it all handheld, all on planes and trains while I was touring this past weekend, and which I don't normally love doing for a game of this kind of scope.

But I'm, I, but it does work.

I mean, clearly, they've just put, they've, they've figured out how to make it work on handheld, and especially because I get the OLED switch, so the screen is really pretty.

So it, you know,

I've been having a lot of fun with it.

I'm not sure if like how I would, where I land, but yeah, Matt, maybe you have a a take on this because I know you've played more of this game than I have, but

I'm not sure where I land on.

Do you just jump into Tears of the Kingdom or do you play Breath of the Wild first?

Because it is in a lot of ways like such an iterative game.

And I think it's like a much, you know,

it's a, you know, a more refined game by virtue of a lot more development by virtue of it being the second one.

I think you're probably fine to just go straight to Tears of the Kingdom if you're intrigued.

I would tend to agree with that too, specifically because of the

the tutorial part of the game, I think, is some of the best video game onboarding I've seen in

years.

Like

you get every skill you could possibly need for the entire game in the first hour or something.

And from there, it's just like, all right.

Go nuts.

Like, go.

Cool.

So you get to experience your abilities from very early on.

And it's not like you're going around the entire map or something.

and you don't have one of the abilities yet.

You're like, oh, I got to come back when I have that.

You just have everything and you can just go.

So

I would definitely make a case for

starting with tears if you want to be in on the

conversation.

On the conversation, yeah.

But otherwise, you know, Breath of the Wild also really, really great.

Would I enjoy Breath of the Wild if I beat if I play Tears of the Kingdom for 80 hours or whatever, and then I'm like, shit, I I should go play Breath of the Wild, or would it feel like a little wonky or like not as rich?

I don't know if it would feel wonky, but I think for me, I played Breath of the Wild.

It took me three times to like latch on to Breath of the Wild, and then I finally went all the way through it.

I think it would feel

like a very slight step backwards, not a complete step, maybe.

Because some of the stuff, you have different abilities, and so it's just a little bit different.

The world feels a little more

filled in in the second game.

So it might, it might feel a little, I don't know if it would feel dated necessarily, but it would feel, it would feel different, I would say, a little bit.

Okay, interesting.

Yeah, I, yeah, I don't know.

I mean, like, I guess what I would say is if you start playing Breath of the Wild and it hooks you, then just keep playing that.

But if you're like, kind of, like, bounce off of it, I wouldn't say that's a reason to not play Tears of the Kingdom.

That's great advice.

That's what I was wondering.

Cool.

Because I didn't get hooked by Breath of the Wild.

I found it very difficult to like control or like I got like jammed up like a half hour into the game like i wasn't able to do almost anything and i was like this sucks and then i found it really frustrating and i was like uh i think what i need to do is get my i usually play handheld i should probably get it up on the screen and uh and mess with it there and i think that a big a big difference that this might be the thing that brings you over to tears i felt like maybe comparatively this might be the thing that brings you to tears this might make you fucking sob right now

uh i think that like some of the solutions to problems in Breath of the Wild, they're more limited.

Wouldn't you say, Nick?

And then in tears, you can kind of solve anything, any way you want.

And they encourage that.

They're like, go nuts.

Dude,

think outside the box.

Yeah, I feel, you know, I've probably said it too many times, but it's more of a problems, not puzzles approach where it's just like, hey, you have to get that, you have to get from A to B and however you want to do it, figure out.

You have to get this, this, you know, this sphere into this receptacle, but you don't have to do it by a certain prescribed method if you figure out some other way to do it that's fine so yeah i i i've definitely have played this game i've definitely have played it in like i feel like kind of clumsy shitty ways and still come out on top and still felt like a genius and i think that's part of the the fun of it part of the fun of the uh you know the building mechanics and then also the um

the various like environmental manipulation mechanics like like like rewinding time that you have at your disposal yeah oh cool where like in breath of the wild you could sort of still do that but it would you'd have to do it more intentionally, I think.

Whereas in Tears, it's like you can kind of do stuff on accident sometimes too and be like, oh, look at that.

Like, I did it.

I didn't think that would work.

Yeah, that definitely was not the right way to do it.

Yeah.

But fucking whatever.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

I'll say

I

rolled credits on Tears of the Kingdom.

Wow.

What an alpha.

Congrats, bro.

Thank you very much.

No, it was.

Next up, getting laid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think think I might try to give that a spin, see what that's like.

I honestly couldn't believe that I did it.

I put a lot of time into it.

I'm somewhere in the 95 to 100 hours in that game already.

And

I just got really focused on doing the main quests.

And I was like, I think for just my own peace of mind,

I need to just put an end to this, like the story.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I can play like Diablo and Street Fighter VI and not feel bad about taking time away from Zelda anymore.

And I also got to get back into Jedi Survivor.

I was like halfway through that when tears came out.

But right now I'm still

playing.

I'm still playing it.

Like I

beat the final boss and I was like, okay,

it spits you back out to right before that, basically.

And

I'm just like, okay, I'm going to go around and get a bunch of shrines, do a bunch of shrines and do all that stuff, do side quests.

Are you 100%er

or a 3%er?

Do you believe the government should stay out of your tax?

Yeah, I think.

Or are you a 1%er, you rich little fuck?

No, certainly not a 1%er.

As far as milk goes, 2% for sure.

I'm not a 100%er at all.

But this game, I'm not ready to be completely done with it.

I just needed

the urgency to finish the story to be off my back a little bit.

Yeah, I get what you're saying.

I just like you're just saying it's like it was just gnawing at me.

I would be playing it so much that I was like, not really doing.

I mean, I put 100 hours in it.

Like, I wasn't doing it.

It's been out at this point for a couple of weeks.

Yes, exactly.

So I was like, I'm just, this is all.

Well, the first day that I had it, I lost a day to it.

I just like went and played it until it got dark and my eyes hurt.

So

it's good.

It's good to have that sort of be done and I can just kind of move on and

play different games.

It was nice to put in, like, I returned to the Ninja Turtles Shredder's Revenge game the other day.

Oh, hell yeah.

And I was like, oh, I forgot it.

I loved this.

This is so good.

And, you know, that's just a quick little like playing that a little bit.

So I got a lot of fingers and a lot of pies right now.

I'm back at it.

I'm back on my bullshit.

Can I ask a spoiler-free question about the end game?

Did you think like it was, first off, did you do, like, felt like you did, I'm not sure structurally it's it's this it parallels what's in breath of the wild but did you feel like you did all the main stuff before you got to the end game and then also like what was it from a challenge perspective so I did I did feel like I did that because there are a couple of things

There's a there's honestly a few things on the way to my end game that I wish I'd done differently.

And it was basically just like,

there's certain story points that you get throughout the map in one of the main quests that you can get out of order.

And I

got a lot of those before I was getting ready for the end game.

So I had a lot of information early on about

things that were happening that I was like, I shouldn't know this yet

because nobody, everybody else is like asking me, oh, I wonder what's going on with this.

And I'm like, well, I fucking know.

I know.

I'm just not saying anything, I guess.

In my game, Link knows everything.

It's just like, I'll let you guys figure it out.

I'm not telling you a goddamn thing.

So that's sort of a regret of the playthrough, I would say.

But I did feel by the time I was at the end that I was sufficiently prepared.

You know, I had the master sword, I had all the main sort of story beats in my head ready to go.

And then when I saw the ending, I was like, this is, I mean,

I need some distance from it, I think, but it's, it's, I think it's like an all-time,

all-time game, maybe somewhere in my top three.

Wow.

It's like, it was such a gorgeous experience.

And it's definitely recency bias.

I'll mean, you know, ask me again in a year what I think about it, but I, I,

that,

I've never done that.

I've just, I, I, I just, I could, I couldn't believe it.

Unbelievable.

And which two Pokemon games fill out the rest of your top three?

Uh, it's Pokemon Gold and Silver, same generation.

Wow, okay, okay, wow.

You fool, you know, it's um

I've lost many a day.

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And we're back live during a flex alert.

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Clutch move by the home team.

What's the game plan from here on out?

Laundry?

Not today.

Dishwasher?

Sidelined.

What a performance by Team California.

The power truly is ours.

During a flex alert, pre-cool, power down, and let's beat the heat together.

hey, let's let's talk a little bit about a game that well, maybe a game from this franchise might be in in my all-timers the second iteration.

We're on now though Diablo 4, which was released on June 6th of 2023, officially, though you could do the pre-release.

I'll say this:

I thankfully have, I could afford the pre-release, and also I could justify it as being for work, and I still couldn't buy, like, like,

I couldn't bring myself to spend an extra $20 or $30 to play the game for an extra weekend.

Even though it would have made my life a lot easier and I probably would have had fun doing it, I still was just like, I can't fucking do that for like an extra, probably total, probably all told, an extra 10 hours of gameplay early.

I personally couldn't bring myself to do that.

Or two cups of coffee.

I didn't have enough.

Thank you, Matt.

I didn't have enough time in hindsight to justify it.

Like, I put maybe four hours in before the actual release date came.

And I'm like, did I pay $30 extra dollars to get my a rogue to level six?

Like, what a fucking idiot.

I just got so giddy.

I was like, oh, you can get it now.

Why don't I have it?

And I just blew it.

It probably would have made my life easier, though, for me to do what you did because I was, as I mentioned earlier, I was out of town.

Basically, I left town on June 6th when it officially released.

So I was like, fuck, I'm not going to have enough time to actually play this game.

I realized too late.

Then I got back in town and,

you know, when God closed the door, he opens a window.

I got fucking sick.

And so I was like, I don't have enough time to play this game.

But you know what?

I'm back in town and I'm sick.

I got nothing else to do but play this game.

So I've binged the shit out of it over the past couple of days and I got a character to level 36.

So I feel like I have pretty decent.

I was kind of

sort of watching your progress yesterday, like, because I was online for a little bit while you were playing on and

And I like the two times that I checked, I was like, oh, he's like level 23.

He's probably not going to catch up to me.

And then later on in the day, I was like, oh, Nick's been playing, playing.

So, yeah, I've been kind of blazing through this, and I've gotten a, you know, I feel like a good sense of this game developed by Blizzard Team 3, which is Nerve Iron with support from Blizzard Albany, formerly Vicarious Visions, who did the Diablo 2 Resurrected remaster that we all really like.

Directed by Joe Shelley, Sebastian Stepian, and Luis Barriga, who left the studio in 2021.

And

let's just talk Diablo generally first.

Matt, I know you got into the franchise with Diablo 3, and you're a big fan of that.

And Gabriel, I know you played some Diablo 3 as well.

But let's just give a baseline for everyone.

I mean, I'll start.

I started with Diablo 1 on PC.

I played Diablo.

I played them all.

This is probably one of my most played franchises, period.

I will qualify that by saying that the bulk of those hours came with Diablo 2.

That's the one I played the most.

But

I've always been a fan of this franchise.

And even on its

Even

with its lulls, even with the Diablo 3 launch, I've always still kind of been a defender and a fanboy of just these games in general.

Matt, how about you?

Yeah, I was always interested in it.

I didn't grow up playing games on PC, so I just never, I never had it.

But when I got...

When I had my Switch, I saw that

you could play, you know, Diablo 3 on there.

I was like, oh, okay, I'll check in on this.

And I remember looking up if it was like good on there.

Like, if it was like, is Diablo 3 good?

And the consensus was it wasn't at first, and then it became good.

Like, so I jumped in when they

fixed everything.

And the Switch, the Switch port of it is, is fantastic.

It's so good.

So I really loved that.

I played through all of that.

And I never squatted up with anybody, though, because I didn't know anybody.

Well, also, by the time I started playing it, everybody was kind of done.

Like, everybody was kind of done with it, and nobody was playing it on Switch.

Um,

so I never squatted up with anybody, but then when the two uh remaster came out, we squatted up a couple times, that was really fun.

Uh, and I was like, oh, I see like the power of like doing this with somebody else, it's great, it's like a lot of fun, yes.

Um, and then when Immortal came out, and I think we did the episode around then, uh, we did a previous episode where we talked about Diablo a little bit.

Um,

I remember thinking, it sucks that I do sort of like this, but

it feels bad.

Like, it feels bad because of the microtransactions within the game and

just like the way they handled that whole thing in general.

So I remember putting that down, but feeling like it played well.

And then I was excited for this one,

keeping up with the betas.

And

it's been fun.

I'm bouncing back and forth between my PC and Steam Deck because I have it installed on my Steam Deck as well.

And it's, it's, oh, it's fantastic.

Same game installed two different places.

Because of the compatibility, it's your same character, right?

It's my same character.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm not missing.

It's like, it's like,

you know, when I want to not be sitting at my desk, like we were talking about earlier, and I wanted to sit a foot away from where my desk is, I can play on my Steam Deck instead.

I love like listeners who live anywhere but New York and LA are like, just fucking move and have a fucking like these guys like, you know, guys, like people are like, I make 84 grand a year and I have an entire room for gaming.

Yeah,

you don't have to be, I live in Columbus, Ohio, and I have a fucking floor of my apartment for gaming.

I have a five-person family.

Three-story house.

Must be nice.

Sorry, I want to be a coastal elite.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sorry, I like to have seven Thai restaurants to choose from.

Yeah.

There you go.

Honestly, that is pretty much the main reason to move to the city is like, okay, I want a different Thai restaurant tonight because they do this better.

And not a worse one.

An equally as good one or better than the one I was going to get.

They're all good.

It's great.

It's great out here.

I fucking love it.

It's so cal.

If the sun doesn't come out soon, I will blow my head off.

But

we kind of have a stretch of June gloom all month long so far.

Yeah, plus like the rainiest winter in

history.

We've been kind of, which is great for us indoor kids, but I'm a beach boy as well.

I've been saying 100%.

Where do we live?

Tristram?

Oh, thank you, Matt.

Sit, stay a while.

Gabris, did you, when did you hop in with Diablo?

D1, Mama Sita.

Wow.

I've been a Blizzard head from the jump from

W1

through D1 through WoW.

I've played everything that came out by Blizzard was a StarCraft one and two, of course.

I was, I've loved all of their games since I was a kid.

I grew up playing PC game, I grew up playing Nintendo at my house, then we got PlayStation.

And then when I got to like sixth grade, I moved towns and made friends with these two nerdy kids.

And I'll just shout them out now, JP and Sanford.

And they were PC gamer guys.

And we got, they got me really into PC gaming.

First, with like local, like sitting at one computer playing, like taking turns playing Command to Conquer, or a TBS, like

I've always talked about Heroes of Might and Magic is maybe one of my favorite games ever made.

If I come to that all-time episode, I will be talking about Heroes of Might and Magic.

If they don't make that game for like iPad or something soon, I'm going to blow, like, I got to stop threatening suicide on this podcast.

It's getting close.

Now there's two things working against me.

We got to put a trigger warning on this episode and on the trigger of the gun on my desk.

Yeah, you come back and we'll talk Heroes of Might and Magic sometime and Heather and Matt will sit by mutely and just sulk.

No, no,

I'll try to talk.

I feel like it'll be like trying to show my little brother like a Phil Hartman sketch, too, and that I'll be like, no, it's really cool.

And it's like, wait, it moves this slow, and this is the animation, and you're making monks that are your ranged warriors.

And it's like, okay, shut up, kid.

Leave me alone.

But I grew up playing those games.

And And JP and Sanford, we got really into Warcraft when it first came out.

Who you want me to kill?

Then we got really into StarCraft.

Alive and Goliath Online.

Then we got into Diablo.

Shit, stay a while.

Then we got into World of Warcraft.

That one didn't stick as much.

I did end up playing a lot of that

when I was in my early 20s.

But all these games stuck.

And I've always loved, Heroes of the Storm.

I don't even like games that move that fast, but I fell in love with that game because of the IP was all Blizzard stuff.

And I love their art.

I love their, and having like, you know, 20 years of history with that,

I would say I'm 41 now.

I probably have 29 years of history with the Blizzard games or something fucking crazy.

Wow.

Like whenever Warcraft 1 came out,

which is upsetting now that I said that out loud.

Yeah, I mean, 1994, it looks like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah, since I was 12.

So about almost 30 years.

And then, weirdly, all these, and I've loved them all.

And Diablo, especially, because, like you said,

Weigra, I'm a big fantasy head and a big D ⁇ D head.

I read a lot of fantasy novels.

So swords and sorcery, might and magic, all that shit always works on me.

So more than even StarCraft II, which was a game I played thousands of hours of, I loved Diablo the most.

And then

Diablo

2, I think, was the one I played the most because that was like in my junior high years.

Like probably, you know, around the same time as you, Wigs.

I put hours into that game.

But then I got into D3 a little bit, but it came out when I was like not in my gaming era.

So I played it a little bit, but not too much.

But over the pandemic, me and the aforementioned JP and Sanford, our nickname is the Nerd Herd, made by Joanne Gabris, my mom.

She named us that when we were 13.

Kind of stuck.

Your mom's the biggest bully.

I'm the way I am for a reason, Apadoc.

There's a reason I've given you a wedgie six out of the seven times I ran into you this year.

It's all me just recycling trauma.

Bullshit rolls downhill.

But

over the pandemic, the nerd herd, we got into D3 again and we started playing Diablo.

It was like, yo, we should get on and play.

And we started playing Diablo 3 with our phones on FaceTime audio.

And so we like, would have like two and a half hour gaming sessions.

They're on the East Coast, so it's perfect for me to play after one of the guys has kids.

Like they go to bed.

I get on at like six-ish.

I play until like eight-ish or nine-ish and they're like going to sleep and all that.

And then, so I, this is just a year ago.

I put like another 60 hours into a Diablo game.

So when Diablo 4 was announced, we are all on.

And my biggest concern, and this is like one of the main things I want to talk about, my biggest concern was moving off of mouse and keyboard.

I'm so adjusted to mouse and keyboard for gaming,

especially Diablo, which feels built for it.

I was so hesitant.

I was like, this controller shit's going to bum me out.

This controller shit's going to be whack.

And boy, am I here to tell you, it is not.

Controller

works so much better than I imagined.

Like

almost improves upon the game in a way.

100% agree.

I mean, let's talk about that right now because it's in my notes.

And they, you know, controller support was added in Diablo 3 for consoles, you know, but by necessity.

They refined it a lot with the Reaper of Souls expansion came out that basically just fixed the game completely.

It's a completely different game, was a completely different game after that expansion.

And that was where I got into, you know, I played on PC initially.

I played the console version

when Reaper of Souls came out, and I had heard about some of this.

And yeah, I actually preferred the controller version there.

And here, I did the same thing.

I played it when I played Diablo 4 in the open beta.

I played some with mouse and keyboard.

I played some with controller.

I was like, controller feels a little better.

And And with the retail release, same feeling.

I prefer it with the controller.

And I'm playing a necromancer.

And that's a class that requires like, you know,

in theory, it's like positioning your cursor to cast curses and

to, you know.

You know, to send out debuffs and stuff.

And like, there's like a, there's like a lot of,

but it works really well,

like, like, you know, if you're exploding corpses or whatever, you know, that's the sort of thing you do with mouse and keyboard, but it works really well with the controller.

And I just, I find it more like meditative and honestly just more fun.

Matt, how have you, you've been playing on PC as well?

Yeah.

But did you, like, have you, have you fluctuated between the control schemes?

So, yeah, I have a little bit because when I was playing the beta, I was playing it exclusively on the PC and I had never done mouse and keyboard

gaming before, really.

Not since, I mean, Disco Elysium, which was like its own sort of thing, but never played a Diablo

with mouse and keyboard.

And I, so I didn't know.

I had no idea that it was, that it felt that good even.

I was like, oh, clicking is just fun.

Like, I like to click.

It feels good.

But then, since I've been playing on Steam Deck, I'm sort of used to the controller interface already because it's like, you know, it's an Xbox controller basically on a screen.

So I've been playing like that.

And yesterday, when I was doing a bulk of my playing, I

was like, you know what?

I'm just going to

connect my Xbox controller and see how that feels.

And that

was,

that was incredible.

It felt so good.

It felt so great.

I was like, oh, I don't know if I'll ever go back to

the mouse and keyboard anymore.

I just, I, I, the controller, I think, is, uh, because I, I mean, I played it on Switch too, so I'm also,

you know, dabble three on Switch, so I'm used to controller interface anyway, but it felt so much better this time around.

Yeah, I toggled back and forth a few times, but I've largely landed on just playing exclusively with the controller.

You know, it is, there are situations like if you're like socketing items or something, it's maybe that's a little easier to do something in your inventory screen with a mouse, but if you just have a mouse at the ready, you can just do that real quick.

But

once I figured out how to map my skills, because this is part of the thing, you basically have five skills that you can use as hotkeys.

That's what you're limited to.

And once I figured out how to make those, you know, again, I'm playing a Necromancer, so like Decrepify, which is like a curse that

slows enemies.

So like I have that on my on my L trigger, and then I have Corpse Explosion, which, you know, does exactly what it says, deals damage to enemies by exploding the corpses of slain enemies.

I have that on my right trigger, and so like I kind of get into that, and then I've got my, you know, my other two attacks on my face buttons, uh, and uh, along with the, the, the, it's not, it's not a role, but there's like a dodge that's that's built in, which is something that's kind of brought over from Diablo 3.

Once I figured out how to map everything out, I was like, this controls like a dream, and also just direct direct moving your character in that isometric, like action RPG perspective.

It just feels right.

Yes, that is part of it.

And I couldn't believe, and also I'll be honest, like PlayStation makes communication while you're playing easier too.

Like it like streamlined it all.

Like it's really idiot proof.

Like I'm just like talking into my controller to my two buddies on the East Coast as we just fucking play games.

Like it's fucking...

It's like so simple and rad.

And the uh

I could not believe like what you I couldn't articulate it the way you just did, Wykes, but what you're talking about, like the moving around without having to click to run to something, because the biggest thing, I used to play a rogue all the time, and uh, we'll get into it when we talk D4.

I do have a like a high 20s level rogue, and uh, you have to hold shift so you don't accidentally click and move your person towards the thing, right?

Right.

This control kind of improves on it in a fucking way, and again, the separation of church and state of moving away from the device that I use for Zooming and writing and responding to lame emails that of commercial auditions.

Like getting off of this and getting

over there and like getting on the controller, it feels so, it feels like you're gaming.

And then it's...

It's weirdly so easy to pick up items.

I thought that would be weird because a huge thing about Diablo, and that's why part of the thing that got me hooked originally was like the slightly improving your tune, like with every item pickup, where you're like, oh, this has 3% movement speed instead of 2.8.

Sick.

Swap it out.

Like that sort of fine-tuning, like upgrades.

And

I thought that picking up items would be difficult.

And it's just so fucking easy.

It's so fucking, it's so smooth.

I'm so proud of the people who ported this game because I'm fucking, I've never played it on console until this one.

And I'm truly impressed.

Yeah, they, they, you know, what, uh, the, the, the, the development team, the, the, the QA side, like everyone who just like figured out how to make this like

as much a controller game as it is like a mouse and keyboard game.

I mean, it's it's huge and it makes it so much more approachable.

I think that what you're just talking about, loot, because that's like the whole, the whole gameplay loop of these games is just like you kill things, you find items, you pick them up.

There's a few things they did here that, you know, first off, the inventory, which they simplified for Diablo 3, you used to have to like, you know, and Gabriel, you know this from the first two, you had to kind of Tetris block in, you know, oh, I've got this, this bow.

This is going to to take up eight slots.

Like a whole lot of movement.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So I got to move a bunch of rings and I got to stash something inside my Heratric cube, you know, like there, like a lot of that was just inventory management.

Here it's completely been streamlined.

Every, it like even more so than Diablo 3, which Diablo 3 had some half slots for smaller items.

Here, like everything just goes in the same size.

Like it doesn't matter.

An amulet is the same size as a tower shield.

That's one thing.

There's an element of that I kind of miss that stuff, but also I know that it's just like, that's just nostalgia and actually, it makes this a, uh, a much easier game

played out exactly a smoother experience.

Another thing they do is they have just a stat that's just item power, which I think is great for people who want to play this game casually because like, if I don't want to pay attention to all the different, you know, plus to stats that we have and like you were saying an increase a percentage increase to movement speed and a critical chance increase.

I can just see if this game this has greater item power than the thing I currently have equipped and if so if I swap it out at least on the the default difficulties you're probably gonna be fine yeah like for your first 30 levels before you're specializing anything too before you're like building around rapid fire or whatever building around corpse explosion like you could just that's such an improvement like oh that's better like the thing you love about Diablo is like oh blue is better than white yellow is better than blue and then

when you get to level 30 then you got to start reading it like you're like okay let's let's let me find out what each of these things and then oh it's like oh an orange is better than yellow.

Sick.

Okay, let's see what.

And

I've been fucking, you're right.

That item power thing is very helpful when you're just like, especially because usually you wait to town portal to like fuck your to zhuzh your items.

This, you can kind of do it on the fly.

You're like, oh, these are better boots.

Throw them on.

Like, I can, I'll fight harder now.

Yeah, and on, and on that note, like, what they've done with item identification, and I don't know if they, this is a thing that got borrowed from like, you know, Torchlight or Path of Exile, some of these other big action RPG franchises.

I played a a little bit of them, but none of them have quite hooked me in the same way that the Diablo franchise has.

But

the way item identification works, which is just you see the item on the play field and it just says what the item type is and a color, and then when you put it in your inventory, it's automatically identified.

But it still kind of has that feeling of discovery that you got back in Diablo II and

used to have a tome of item.

identification scrolls that you would use to identify something in the field.

They just cleverly like kind of remove two steps there, but still give you the same sort of thing.

It gives you the like, oh, shit, an amulet.

And you're like, please let this be good.

Please let this go.

And you just have to open your inventory rather than waiting for one.

Yeah.

It's cool.

And it's such a simple thing.

And it like,

I'm like, as I was playing, I was like, oh, I can't believe this kind of, this is all, this is so simple, but this works in the same way.

Yeah.

It's just so fun to see bow.

You're like, shit, yes, I use a bow.

Oh, it's not much better than my bow.

Yeah.

Like,

you're right.

I didn't even think about that.

That really has the moving, losing the identify scroll is huge.

Yeah, because there was a, like, Diablo 3, I'm trying to remember.

You played it more recently than me, but there is like still an identify items thing you do in your inventory, right?

I think so.

Yeah, there's a scroll, there's still an extra step.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

But you just have an infinite supply.

So the, yeah, I mean, I love that.

And I also like the other thing they tweaked is the, well, they've tweaked a lot, but like the way potions work now, which is that basically you have a, you have a limited number of charges that you can refill based off of, you know,

in certain situations, you'll get a refill of a potion will appear in the field, and then you can use that to replenish your stock, but it's not like you have an inventory or a belt that's full of a bunch of different potions or the Diablo 3 approach where you've got a bunch of like health orbs that spawn.

It's kind of a happy medium that I think works pretty well.

And then the other thing about potions that I'm sure the two of you have stumbled upon is that as you do more like side quests and optional dungeons and and explore more of the map, you get what I think it's called renown.

I forget whatever the fuck it is, but there's something you get in your map.

Eventually, that gives you like bonus skill points that apply to all your characters and bonus potion charges that apply to all your characters.

So it's just a way of like, hey, once you've seen everything with one character, you kind of can shorten some steps with the next characters that you roll.

I don't know.

All that stuff just, it just, I know it's all intensely thought out.

I know there's so many decisions that have to be made in the development process, but that they, they, they did so many tweaks to the core formula while still retaining its essence.

I don't know.

I mean, I, I, the shit you're talking about.

Yeah, the shit you're talking about with the renown, they pulled in some more like classic RPG stuff of like, you get points for opening a way point, like as you discover, you get some renown points as you do a thing, as you complete quests in addition to experience.

Like, and I think that's a really fun because it changes the grinding.

Yeah.

And it's not just like go to a dungeon and run.

You can just keep keep doing dungeons.

These dungeons give you aspects now.

So like, there's like a new way to grind and like side quest grinding and

I think they're not the shrines, but the little like, you know, sort of like

prevent these guys from making the blood orb happen or whatever.

Those little like, those little like accidental instances you could like stumble upon and the sellers.

Like, yeah, events, like that's all such a fun way to add, to like, to have like

narrative grinding in a way.

Like it's like, okay, i i i'm getting murked on this by this boss let me just go wander around discover oh help so-and-so find their husband oh go clear out this basement yeah oh do this and like do a few things you get some experience you maybe get a cool item you learn a new skill or whatever you and even the i think the skill tree is a very fun improvement and is and it's it's it's interesting it's like stressful in a way because it used to just be like

maximize this get to this game over you know get to the big r2 attack or whatever and you're ready to fucking go i enjoy this skill tree a lot and i'm like like i feel like i've respecced like seven times with my character and i love that it costs a little costs money which keeps money because money loses gold loses power in diablo eventually because you're just like for sure yeah i can sell items for 18 grand instead of uh salvaging them or whatever but i like that money like it leaves money to be kind of like have some skill like oh shit this ring like i just got a ring that makes rapid fire ricochet 33 of the time or something and that's fucking awesome an orange ring uh socketed too i don't want to get too into it but i'm super stoked about it there you go so getting that i'm like oh i didn't have rapid fire i'm like let me drop several hundred gold nuke all these stats juice all these stats and then you're like oh this is a fun i'm playing like a different game now normally you just like build your items around your uh loadout like you build your loadout around your skills now it's kind of fun where it's like oh i'll just respec all this to try this item.

Like, oh, cool.

Let me, and then in the tree are like random passive stuff too.

I, I will just cop to one thing I said with this game was I'm not going to allow myself to like read about it a bunch until I've played many hours.

So as I'm talking to you now, I have like two high level 20 characters because I have one guy that I only play with those friends.

Like that's our rule.

You can have as many, like I have, and then I have a 10, a level 10 barbarian to mess with.

And then I have a level like 28 rogue that I play solo with and

um I don't know what overpower means I don't know what crowd control means I don't know what lucky shot is I don't know what I don't know what like nine things are in the game and I'm not letting it stop me at all I'm not I'm just like not building around it I'm just like okay I just like sorted out vulnerable like okay I got it like

yeah like I my build is kind of uh you know has a lot to do with like slowing enemies and then making them vulnerable but that's basically all I know like And

I'm playing on World Tier 2 Veteran, which is like the one step up difficulty.

You have to, I think, finish the game once.

And I'm still doing fine.

So I think part of it is like, yeah, a lot of that stuff starts to feel pretty granular when you're talking about like,

whatever, like a Topaz,

if you socket a Topaz, it gives a percentage increase to critical strike for enemies that are in, you know, that are crowded.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I don't know what any of that means.

Yeah,

this is like too much going on, but like, I like same approach as you was like, I don't need to investigate that stuff until I have one playthrough under my belt, and then I can see what I've been doing wrong in terms of building and outfitting my character.

You said something there that we're playing World Tier 2, and it's not impossible.

No, not at all.

I think they got level scaling really right in this game right now, it feels like.

Even when you're like, someone who's like four levels below you rolls up, the bad guys like, you know what I mean?

Like the baddies become, they're always been like a little manageable.

And, oh, sorry.

And then fighting bosses is a little bit more like stick and move than ever before.

It used to just be like, stand there, hit one, hit two, hit three, hit four, keep clicking, keep clicking.

And then when right click, right, click.

Oh, and then as soon as your skills reproc, drop them all again.

But like, with yeah, it's it 100%.

Yeah.

It's just someone's clear the fuck out because they got a big area attack.

And that was basically the extent of the strategy.

You're basically, you're just trying to just jam as much DPS on them as possible.

Yeah, I agree.

That there's a, there's some more, you know, these fights are

it's not like a souls game, but there's some there's a little bit more

tactical, tactical you need to account for these fights.

I just did a boss fight shortly before we started recording that involved a you had an NPC character who was there who was fighting alongside you who did a shield

within his shield.

Yeah, I did.

Yeah, it's like this is so satisfying.

It's so it's just just that little element of like, I got to hide inside this guy's shield so I don't get nerked, like, uh, you know, nuked by this guy's huge attack is like I don't know just it just made it feel a little bit less like I was just click click clicking for a bit in addition to other new shit I like I shouted out like the kind of RPG elements that they pull in with the renown that you spoke to I also like amongst the character differentials the class differentials is like

uh uh the barbarian has weapon expertise the rogue has like specialization does you know like the little minor things that your class each class gets what does the necromancer have something special like that necromancer Gabris, I'm glad you asked.

The Necromancer is the book of the dead.

Wow.

Which is that

which is really cool.

And I messed around with this a little bit, but it's like, it's basically, so you have skeletons, you have skeletal mages, and you have golems that you can all summon.

And

for each of them, you can choose basically what class you want them to be, or if you want to sacrifice them entirely, meaning you can't summon them, but you get some sort of buff to your character by virtue of excluding them.

So like right now, I have like sacrificed golems.

I I don't have golems at all, and I just have skeletons and skeletal mages.

And that's partly just for fun factor.

I think it's fun to have like an army of like, you know, seven warriors, just seven skeletons that I'm leading around in a parade.

Like that's just like a fun way to play the game.

I don't know if it's the most effective or whatever, but like, you know, you can, you can choose if you want to outfit them with swords or with shields or with

or with

Reapers.

You can choose to, yeah, the mages, you can choose to have them be shadow mages or cold mages or like bone mages.

So, you know, there's, there's some, and then golem, you can have a flesh golem, you can have a, you can have a blood, or I'm sorry, the blood golem is the flesh golem.

Uh, you can have a, a, or a bone golem or an iron golem.

So that, yeah, there's all these decision points you get to, you, you get to make,

and, and they're specific to the class beyond just the skill tree.

So I do like that quite a bit.

I don't know.

I mean, like, it shakes up the gameplay if you like make a new character.

You're like, it's not just like, let me get the barbarian's best skill and play that.

It's like, oh, weapon expertise.

And it's like, I'm dual wielding one mace and one axe.

And they're both slowly gaining levels.

It's like, it's, there's a lot of like variation amongst in a game that

famously was fun, even though it was just like a stand and deliver or a point and click and a DPS kind of monster game.

But I think that the cool little tweaks they're doing in between is a lot, a lot of fun, like for a huge improvement from on D4, I think.

Yeah, it's a, it's, you know, I heard someone years years ago told me that the Diablo 2, playing Diablo 2 is just constant rewards, which was kind of what you were saying earlier.

And like, and I think what they've done here is it's just like, you're still getting constant rewards, but you've got like all these different buckets the rewards are going into.

Right.

So there's just like a bunch of different things you're trying to improve at once.

Bat, I feel like we went bulldozing you a little bit, but I want to get your take on how you, well, look, what class you've been playing and how you feel about the game as you've been progressing through it.

So I, look,

it's no secret, I love beams, right?

I love beams.

Yes.

So I'm playing a sorcerer because in Diablo 3, my sorcerer had a killer beam, just an all-time great beam.

There's no beam in this one.

I don't got it.

What?

I got it.

There's like, I'm going to fucking just throw my

computer out the dang window.

But I, so, I'm, but I'm still playing a sorcerer and I'm really liking it.

I'm, I'm liking the skills that I have.

My um unique uh mechanic is uh enchantment.

So I can put um a skill in either a skill tree spot, like, or, you know, in an ability slot, or I can put it in a passive slot.

So, like, if I have Blizzard or something, right?

Like,

as

one of my skills, it'll just do it automatically in the passive slot,

which is pretty cool.

But what my favorite myself is.

You mean, sorry, I just never played the sorcerer yet.

On your skill bar, like, it'll just be like, whenever Blizzard's ready, it'll just drop it in a fight without you controlling it.

Exactly.

In addition to whatever else you have there.

i could have it i could have it in both too i think

you can get like blitz you can get it like reproccing like two different cooldowns yeah at once oh that's cool uh so like that rocks but i'm playing a mixed magic uh sorcerer right now um so he's got a little bit of everything uh but my favorite my favorite um ability right now is called inferno and i thought that that was just going to be like a big fire it's not it's a fucking huge fire snake and the snake wraps around like whoever's nearby and just burns the shit out of him it rocks it's that's pretty fucking cool it's really cool uh but i was also i was interested in um because i played the sorcerer in the beta and stuff i didn't really mess with any of the characters i've never really done multiple characters in a in a diablo game before but i got curious about the um the druid class

The other day because I've I've played druids in in D and D and they're they're complicated Characters to to play there's just a lot of I felt like everybody that I would play with was like, maybe you shouldn't do that because you don't really understand the rules.

I was the one

in the party that would just always be like, so wait, how many dice do I roll?

Which dice?

What are you talking about?

But then.

I shapeshift.

You have to wait a day and rememorize.

You can't even do that yet, dude.

But if there was time to make jokes, I was doing that, certainly.

But I wanted to play the

try the Druid class.

So I started a druid character yesterday and immediately was like, do I just fucking leave my sorcerer and just keep with this guy?

Because he rocks.

I have a level 25 druid as well.

My first ability is like a groundquake thing where you can just make the ground

shoot up from under an enemy and attack them.

I was like, well, this feels incredible.

I loved that.

Wait till you get to level 15 and get like the wolves.

You get like

two ghost wolves that follow you around that you could sick on people they do like man they do manual damage on their own but then you can hit the fucking triang and then they jump on someone and start shredding okay i might have to put some more time in with the druid because i i was also just liking the like the vibe of the character he looked really cool i was like okay like he's got like this fucking like like fur like he's rot he's rocking a fur or something i was like this this guy's my guy uh and i know you can be like i've seen people in the in the hub world not in the hub world but like in in the uh you know when you're walking around in the, in the play area, I'll call it

like changing to bears and stuff.

And I was like, that seems like it could be a lot of fun.

Yeah, the wear shit's pretty rad.

Yeah, I made, I have a high-level level 20-something rogue and a level 20-something druid, and they look like me and Tiffany.

And I posted on Instagram, like,

yeah, when, when the characters start to look familiar, and everyone thought it was the doleboys, and I was like, oh, yeah.

One of them has like shoulder-length blonde hair and a mask on, and the other one is a giant bearded guy in like antlers.

And I'm like, everyone's like, no, the no boys.

And I was like, oh, shit.

And then I got like weirded out about, oh, yeah, I guess me and Tiff do look like Nick and Mitch, which is upsetting.

It's weird for us, too.

I got to talk to Mitch about this.

Yeah.

I did make me, and Natalie helped me make me in the character creator for my necro.

And it's, it's, you know, you've got like, you can't only do so much.

You've only got like eight prefab faces that you can choose from or something like that for per body type.

But, you know,

it's pretty flexible.

She did as we were going through and like we're looking at tattoos and piercings and stuff you could pick.

She was like, a lot of these feel like cultural appropriation.

I don't think you should be wearing it, having anything.

Was it easy for you because, in general, you're default?

Yeah,

you just hit the randomizer.

I'm good to go.

NBA Jam just, NBA 2K just gives you Weiger to start with.

You're like,

okay,

this fucking vanilla boy, I'll figure some shit out here.

I don't really like to mess with character creation that much because like I'll try to think what, you know, approximate how I look.

And then my girlfriend, like I did this in Street Fighter,

I made this like fucking big, huge guy, and I sort of like gave him like brown skin and like that was it kind of.

And Isabel was like, Doesn't look anything like you.

I was like, yeah, I know.

He's like a fighter guy.

It's like funny.

That's like me if I was a street fighter.

And she was like, I don't, I don't think so.

No.

So she was not as helpful as Natalie was in that regard.

Yeah, sometimes when your partner's around, you're like, doesn't this look like me?

And they're like, no, your neck is grosser or something.

And you're like, okay, okay.

He didn't look like fucking.

I don't need to analyze myself that much.

But it is like, that does bring me to like, you know, the, because they're, this game does have in-game purchases.

The shop is like, I think, you know, it's kind of hidden slash ignorable.

Not hidden.

I mean, they want you to go to the shop and buy platinum and buy,

you know, buy.

aesthetic upgrades, but it is, as opposed to Diablo Immortal, it is purely cosmetic.

It isn't anything that affects your character stats.

Like Diablo Immortal, you could buy stuff from the store that just made your character broken.

And there's nothing like that.

It's just, I haven't bought anything, but I just looked around a little bit.

It's basically just armor sets and, you know, mount upgrades and stuff.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Purely cosmetic.

Which is something you could also get from salvaging and transmogs and stuff like that.

So which I think that's cool, too, that it's like a shortcut rather than like a leap to the finish.

Like you could grind out and get all the looks you want too, just by like, you know, fighting and fighting for yellow items and shit.

Yeah, I mean, look, that shit's just going to be in every game pretty much from now on.

So there's the, what are we going to do?

But as integrated, I think it's, it's whatever.

It's as unobjectionable as

this can be.

And I do think the game looks great that was gonna

bro that was gonna be the next point i wanted to present i think the art is on fucking fire this game makes me want to get a bigger monitor it's hurting my eyes because uh the the writing and stuff is so small and like i need a big i think i need a bigger screen because uh the art is so rich the backgrounds have like movement and the load speed that the the i keep calling them boards i know i'm 41 sorry uh the stages the the instances load in such a great way where I do get some lag every once in a while.

Obviously, your producer is familiar with my shitty Wi-Fi.

I live in West Hollywood where everyone's Wi-Fi sucks for some reason.

But the art is fucking awesome.

And I've never really been a fan of like the Diablo, the world that exists in, like the kind of like Christian hell kind of stuff or like medieval hell

aesthetic.

But I think it's coming alive in this one.

I think it's really rich.

It gets a little redundant previously, but I think these boards, like I just, the one I did, I did that, excuse me, that cave with the guy who protects you in the fucking shield that you were just talking about, Weiger, that had like the fucking tentacles moving outside of the fucking path and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And I love and just like corpses of giants that are just like strewn about.

Yeah.

So much rad shit.

Bad guys look cool.

They're like their articulation on the bad guys looks fucking awesome.

The bosses, of course, look great.

Have you guys gotten gotten murked by the butcher yet?

No, I didn't fight.

I didn't face the butcher yet.

I've heard he's scary as shit.

He just pops up.

You don't like it, he's like randomly in the world.

The butcher will appear and fucking kill you just for like nostalgia.

It's pretty fun that he like is still out there.

And I guess you're just like a Diablo.

It's like a Diablo one boss from way back.

And I think you're supposed to get your level up to the point where when the butcher comes, you get to kill him and get some, probably some dope item.

You're just like, hope he comes.

There's like a guy in Matt, do you remember who that guy was was from

Yakuza Zero who just appears?

It's a name like something like Mr.

Showtime or something like that.

But he's just a big guy who chases you around and beats you up.

And then at a certain point, you reach a point where you could beat him up and like take, but he just takes all your money.

Mr.

Shakedown.

Yeah, Mr.

Shakedown.

Mr.

Shakedown.

Yeah, yeah.

It seems like the same sort of approach to Mr.

Shakedown.

Yeah, I, I, like, like what you were just talking about.

So we finished the same dungeon and I was a higher level, but like you talked about the level scaling earlier.

I'm normally kind of lukewarm about level scaling because I like to feel like you're making progress as you're going through the world.

But for this particular game, it works really well because you can go in different directions.

And like, I just finished act one after having done the bulk of act two already.

Uh, you can go very, very out of sequence here.

It's not like there's these discrete act breaks like in past Diablos.

And so, like, when you're going back to like the early areas, but then all of a sudden, you know, all of the ghouls that you're fighting are your level, your character level, it makes that still engaging.

It's not just encounters you want to sprint past as you might in basketball.

Yeah,

I think it's all really, really well implemented.

And what you're just talking about with the with the art, it's a much grimier direction than Diablo 3.

Maybe some people have criticized kind of an overreaction Diablo 3, but I like it.

I've always liked the Diablo aesthetic, but that just takes me back to like, you know, liking metal in middle school and like liking like a pushead album cover and being like, hell yeah, you know, that's what Diablo reminds me of.

And so like, it's a,

it's the,

it, it, it, it's, it's like, I like that grime.

I like how, how, it, how it's bloody and gory and, and kind of Christian-esque.

Uh, but you talked about having like a bigger monitor.

I have a widescreen monitor.

I have like a 5120 by 1440 display.

It's a, it's a big wide boy.

And this, you know, it supports that resolution.

It looks fucking great.

So, you know,

not to tempt you to another big purchase, but like, I love having a widescreen monitor for this game in particular.

All I need to do is respond to one of these commercial audition emails and nail it, and then I'll be ready to get a fucking big monitor, baby.

You got to do one email.

I just need athletic greens to fucking double up their fucking ads on High and Mighty, and then I'm made in the shade.

Yeah, we're kind of just raving about this game, but I think I don't know.

My expectations were a little mid.

I was a little wary because the Diablo 3 launch was spotty, and I thought, like, oh, the K, this might be another one where it takes a few patches and some DLC to figure out how this game actually works.

Diablo Immortal was obviously a huge whiff.

And

the other big one is Vampire Survivors, which I can't remember if you played that, Gabriel.

Oh, I should have mentioned that in what I've been playing lately.

I fucking played the hell out of Vampire Survivors this pandy.

I love Vampire Survivors, and I was worried it was going to ruin me for Diablo because it's basically like a more passive Diablo that you can just sort of chill chill out and just, you know, just walk around in, basically.

And I was like, is this, is this, is this like kind of reductionist approach to the formula made it so that like I just kind of can see the seams and I don't even need to play the actual game.

But playing this, I've been like, no, this is still fucking great.

I can enjoy both.

Yeah, I'm just really impressed by it overall.

I love the Diablo cliche that anytime you're talking to someone, they can drop to their knees and go, oh no, oh no, and just become like a demon.

Like, it's such a go-to.

It's like, like, whoever you're talking to, they're just like, oh oh no

not now and it gets the ellipses in the writing of like oh and then it's just uh

that like bubble sound effect that it makes as he converts to like a what must be a 26 foot pig man with a big scythe or whatever it fucking rules

there's an earlyish i i think i i'll just i'll just semi-spoil it because it's a side quest and it's early-ish but i'm not sure if either of you got to this where there's a guy there's a shackled prisoner uh and he's like my eyes they took my eyes and he's talking about that there's like a demon who took his eyes but he can see what his eyes see and he sees that like she's over there like tormenting a whole village so you go over there and you uh you know you go through this whole quest you have to like take over one of the uh what i can't remember what it's called what it's called like siege sites or something like that they're some of the strongholds they're stronghold yeah you take over the stronghold and then you come back to him and you bring him his eyes back and he says like oh put him back in my head and he puts him back my head he's just like ah it burns it burns and then runs away away and like explodes it's like jesus christ fucking helped this guy was better off before i helped

uh there's another one where it's like it's and that this is again it's just such a diablo thing of just it's so fucking grim that even when you when you finish a quest a lot of times all you've given someone is closure right just like you know like help help me find my husband and you find them and they've like been crucified and like been pecked apart by crows and you're like well at least now i can uh i can bury their dead.

You know, it's just like, Jesus Christ.

I lost this lady's day in a second way.

Yeah.

Along those lines, a quest I just did was really funny.

It was like, you helped her find her husband, and her husband was just like shackled with a fucking dagger in his chest, dead, like, help me, and dies.

And then she's like, she's like, I don't think you expect payment.

You can have the dagger.

And then you pull it out.

And he's like, oh,

you're like, I didn't want it that bad.

This dagger sucks.

I'm going to salvage it.

I think, I think, and just the one thing we haven't talked about, I've always played a little multiplayer.

This one is, you're always online in this, which is kind of interesting.

A new take.

I never played.

Is D3 always online?

I feel like you could.

Yeah, Diablo 3.

That was like a, there was a, it came out long enough where there was a huge backlash to that before launch.

It was like, I can't believe I have to be always online to play this game.

And now that's like, you know, it's given.

Yeah.

Like,

but I would say the multiplayer really enriches the the game a lot, too.

It, like, the game is built for it, obviously, because, like, with the skills, like, slow and vulnerable, that's, like, you could be focused on that and be a great addition to a party, you know, like, and that, and I think, I think it really is conducive to fun in that way, and it's super easy communicating.

I've never been a talking while playing guy.

Like, that's like, that's something that's new.

I've always just been playing RTSs with, like, pinging and shit like that.

And that was always enough.

I didn't want dialogue because I don't want stranger dialogue for sure.

No.

But with with like fucking like when hopefully I'll get to fucking party up, squat up with you freaks.

Oh, hell yeah.

And then we could all be fucking talking.

And I, I, I've just been,

we've just been, me and my buddies have just been on chat gushing about the fucking game, just being like, shit, I can't believe this mechanic works.

Oh, the gems are, and like all the stuff, the dumb stuff you love about the game, like they've just kept it enough of like the gem increase, like keep the, and then sharing a stash across your characters, that's a really fun fucking fucking mechanic, too.

Of like, shit, I'll drop this ring for my rogue when my rogue gets higher level.

Like, there's like a little bit of like, you can

it promotes playing other characters for like the first time in a way, too.

I feel like of like, oh shit, yeah, I'll throw another guy on there.

Leave the axe in there.

I'll make a barbarian just to fucking play with this axe eventually.

But that's like kind of the best thing about it, too.

It's like a game like this, where you could spend hours and hours and hours in it, like playing just different characters.

Because the campaigns aren't like terribly long.

Like, they're not like, it's, I mean, it's not like Tears of the Kingdom.

Like, I'm not going to be playing this for 100 hours, probably, but, like, I could be playing multiple characters.

Like, I'm playing the game for the same amount of time, but like, I'm doing a completely different thing every time.

That's, like, that's so incredible.

I recommend people, if they have friends, to fu if you have friends, if listeners in this podcast have friends, all right, never mind.

But if you have friends, it's fun to be like, oh, I play this character with this group.

I play this tune with these.

Like, oh, we can all be like level five and only grow together and be like, all right, this druid, like, I have a druid that's just for with my friends.

And that's, like, kind of fun that I can, you can, and then maybe I'll do that with some of my comedy friends who are on D4 and some of my other friends are on D4.

And then you get to play like a multiple different types of gameplay.

And I think that's like a fun way to go about it.

Yeah, 100.

That's great advice to segment it like that.

Yeah, I've only played solo so far.

I got to play some.

I wish I could speak to the multiplayer component a little bit more.

You do see a lot of just randos that you run around, particularly in some of the

instanced world events,

which I don't know.

I'm kind of, I think I overall like it.

I think it making the world feel more populated, even though it doesn't really make sense of the context of the quest you're doing.

I still kind of like it.

It's really funny when you're like getting absolutely murked by a bunch of fucking baddies and there's like a dude standing there with like ice armor on, not helping at all.

You're like, come on man just throw one lightning bolt over there or some shit i was gonna say yeah i like i like seeing a stranger sort of doing the same thing i'm doing and being like we're friends now i'm playing with this guy

i've squatted up with some of the get played listeners in our discord and i

i loved it I i

we a couple of us took down a boss together and I was like, this is, this is everything.

This is, it was so fun.

It was just so great.

And then getting in the chat being like, that was awesome.

We did great.

Everyone's doing good.

I loved it.

Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm having a blast of this game so far.

We'll, we'll, we'll see where I am after I, I finish this playthrough.

If I, if I roll more characters, if I do any of the, the kind of post-game content, we'll, we'll see.

But as of right now, it's, it's doing exactly what I, what I wanted from it, from, from a Diablo game released in this year.

Hell yeah.

Uh, good game.

Great, great fun.

What a, what a dang hoot.

Yeah, my wife has dinner plans tonight.

I I have a show at 10.

I feel like that's a perfect gap to kill a couple of hours fucking

stamping on skeletons and killing Moon Clan goat men and whatever the fuck else they throw at me.

Well, on that note, hey, how about we do a segment?

I'm going to see if Nick and Gabris can determine which of these monsters is real or fake.

It's time to find out in the beastie area.

Ooh.

These are these monsters.

These are Diablo-specific monsters.

These are Diablo-specific monsters.

Some of them are real, and some of them are fake.

Let's see if y'all know your stuff.

Here we go.

Frog demon.

Frog?

Did you say brog or frog demon?

Frog.

Frog.

Like the amphibian.

Fake.

Wait, what's the choices?

Fake or real?

Fake or real.

They're all real, but in the game Diablo 4, there is no frog demons.

But there are frog demons in my sleep.

I would say...

yeah, I'm trying to think of, I'm going to say fake.

I think this is this one doesn't.

It's real.

I'm not, it's, it's in, I think they're in Diablo 3.

These are from all of

Diablo.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

I would have gotten that then.

Sorry.

No, I'm just kidding.

I'm kidding.

Okay, so

now you tell me.

Okay, great.

So no points there.

Next one.

Giant Mosquito.

That's real.

That's real.

Great, great Foley on those boys.

Okay, that is a real one.

How about this?

Skeleton King.

There's so many skeletons.

I think there is a Skeleton King boss in two or three.

I'm going to say real.

Nick says real, Gabrius.

Oh, we both have to vote.

I thought he buzzed in.

Real, also.

You're both wrong.

It's fake.

I made that shit up.

No way.

There's no skeleton.

There's no skeleton.

There's no game.

Skeletal archer, skeletal captain.

There's like a skeleton everything.

There's Jack Skellington, and he's a tattoo on like this goth chick's butt rules.

Sorry.

Skeleton King is a boss on Diablo 3.

What are you talking about?

It turns out we're at King Leorick.

I just looked it up.

He's the first boss of the end of Act One.

That's why I remembered it.

I thought I made it up.

The fix.

I mean, go,

if that was the fucking.

If that's the length you went for creativity, it's like, oh, I got to come up with a monster they'll never hear of.

Skeleton something.

Well, I wanted it to sound real.

Okay.

That's the challenge.

I'll say

it's a boss, not a minion, not a monster in the world.

I think I'll still give you both the point because guess what?

I fucked up.

Yeah, agreed.

Thank you.

How about the next one?

I'll take that point.

I need it.

Sasquatch.

I don't think there's a Sasquatch in the Diablos.

Fake.

Fake.

Now I'm Googling these.

It's real.

Where's their Sasquatch?

He's in

Act 5 and Diablo 3.

He's in there.

Yeah, that's right.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, it's named Silverback in the game.

It's a variant of Yet of the Yeti.

Encountered only on Gray Hollow Island Zone of Adventure Mode in Act 5.

Okay, so now I'm going to close the Diablo wiki so I can keep playing.

Yeah, it's interesting that you also have Google over there.

I'm trying to remember what Act 5 of Diablo 3 was.

That's

no recollection.

Is that the one where

you go into heaven, or is that Act 4?

The thing about these games,

any of it, any story point, couldn't tell you.

I'm just clicking.

I'm just there clicking and picking stuff up.

I just remember like biome.

So there's a point where you go into like the

sanctuary, but like the

pandemonium, whatever.

You go into the end, so you're up there with all the fallen angels.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It's a game that you can play with exclusively skipping cutscenes and still enjoy.

Yeah.

But

I will play it through and we'll watch them all in honor of the designers because it is the art and voice work is fantastic.

We didn't talk about the cinematics here, but I think the, you know, the major cinematics, the pre-rendered ones are all really well done.

But also all the in-game stuff, I mean, they did a lot more work in terms of making these, the in-game cutscenes, the in-engine cutscenes feel cinematic, changing the camera angle from isometric.

There's like look at points you can get to, or like the you go to like a low angle and you see more of the world.

That like all that stuff, I think, is

you know, it's I think it was maybe like, okay, let's see how this works the first time I encountered it.

But as I was going, as I was going, I was like, oh, yeah, this makes this feel like it has like kind of a triple-A game presentation in terms of the story side of it.

Can we get back to my game now?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

We have room for tangents, right?

Yes, okay.

Lightly lightly Google two words, and we'll say fake or real.

Sick fucking game.

Okay, here we go.

Uh, mitochondria.

Those are those are real.

Uh, no, um,

bone fetish.

I think that's real.

Uh, I know it's a real, my doctor says I have it.

Okay, that one is real.

This game is.

The skeleton king gave me a bone fetish, if you know what I mean.

Swamp demon.

fake.

I'm going to say that's fake.

Okay, you guys are really good at this game.

It's tied up.

That's fake.

Frozen ghoul.

That's real.

I think there is a frozen ghoul.

That's real.

That one's fake.

Wow, he got us.

Thank you.

All right, is that all you were trying to do?

We're done now.

I just wanted to make you guys look like fucking idiots.

There's so many ice enemies.

There's so many, because you start in an ice biome in this game.

Yeah.

and then there's like the, you know, like the act five of Diablo II is all ice.

So much of Diablo 3 is ice.

There's just so much ice.

I was like, I feel like there was an ice ghoul in there somewhere.

Yeah, there's a classic variation.

You get like, you start getting ghoul, then you get like shadow ghoul, fire ghoul.

Like, you know, like, they do like

tinted red and it's a fire ghoul.

Tinted blue and it's that.

Like, I do think that's another cool element.

Like, when a bad guy becomes vulnerable, they get like a little purple light.

Like, there's like some light art changes that never previously existed, which is kind of fun.

Just a couple more here.

Ghastly Gravedigger.

Ooh.

That's the monster truck that runs over

Deckard Cane, and you have to get revenge.

Gravedigger.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

Old May Herodrum.

I remember Bigfoot was like the bit, like, like, it was, it was kind of the equivalent of like, there was the Hulk Hogan, and then, and then, like, the Ultimate Warrior came about.

I feel like it was the same thing with Bigfoot and the grave and gravedigger.

Yeah, it was like Gravedigger came about, and it was like, that's the cool one.

Uh, when I went to Gen Con this past year, uh, they had Bigfoot in the convention because there's like a Bigfoot war game, and I'm sure there's like nine Bigfoots just you know, like that are traveling around the world, but it was pretty rad.

Like, and I guess there was dozens of 40-something-year-old men there who were like, whoa, Bigfoot, like everyone just taking like the Mitch thumbs up photo in front of it like

it's real to me

all right so what was the name of that again ghastly grave digger

ghastly grave digger

uh i'll i'll guess real nick's right so now it's five to four

do you have which game that's from i don't not in front of me uh i just wrote it down a bunch ghastly i'm gonna say it's from actually i think it's from this this new one i think from diablo 4.

Oh, wow.

I got a mix going in here.

The final one.

Dark magician.

I think you're supposed to call them just magicians, dude.

Like, I don't think their complexion should come into it at all.

That's me personally.

No.

Big ally over here.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know about you, but I'm an ally.

I don't know about you, but I've been conflicted.

I got the woke mind virus.

I'm sick too, bro.

The woke mind virus, dog.

Doctor said it's terminal.

Doctor said, I said, Doc, I got the woke mind virus.

What does that mean?

It's like, you just give a shit about other people.

And I was like, whoa.

And I know what you're thinking.

The doctor was a woman.

I'm going to guess the Dark Magician is fake.

I'm going to go with fake as well.

It is fake.

I made it up.

But Nick's our winner of the Beastiery.

Wow.

Greatest honor of my fucking life.

Hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Links to our social media in the episode description.

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

Also, check out Get Animate, where we're continuing the melancholy of Harui Suzumiya, which is on Stitcher Premium or at patreon.com/slash get played.

John Gabris, such a treat to have you on.

Everyone should listen to High and Mighty.

Everyone should check out Action Boys on Patreon, Patreon with a Z.

I don't know if I fucking, I have a Patreon.

I should know how to say it.

I think Action Boys on Patreon.

Action Boys with a Z.

I've said this before when you've been on the pod.

I've said this in other contexts.

I just was touring with our mutual friend and mutual janitor, Tammy Sager, who's also an Action Boys fan.

It's just like, I just think it's the funniest podcast.

So, like, if you want to listen to a funny show, check it out.

It's so great.

It's a podcaster's podcast, really.

Yeah, yeah.

I appreciate you, Weiger.

You always gas us up.

And when funny people find our show funny, it means a lot.

Like that's all we're going for.

We're talking about stuff we love and trying to be funny, like trying really hard to be funny.

Too hard, it's embarrassing.

But I appreciate you giving us a shout out.

Yeah.

And we have some free episodes of Action Boys.

You can hunt them down.

There's like a free feed called Unlocked and Loaded if you're like, want to just get a sniff and get hooked.

you know, like, we'll give you the first taste for free, baby.

Hell yeah.

And I and Mighty, I have guessed it on a few times, Matt, you've guessed it.

That's right, talking about Weezer.

And so, and Heather, Heather has been on, Heather was a guest way back in the day, and we talked video games.

And I didn't even really know her then.

I was just a fan.

Like, I wasn't really friends with her.

I just reached out and had Heather Ann Gamble over my house, you know, like

come to my apartment and talk about video games with me, a guy you met at backstage at UCB.

In all fairness, fairness, I don't know if Matt and I know Heather all that well either.

Yeah, well, that's what I was about to say.

I thought you guys would find it funny that she was in my house.

Like Weiger, I've traveled the country with, and I'm still never seen the inside of his fucking house.

Not trying to.

Gabriel, is anything else you want to plug?

Yeah, check out 101 Places to Party Before You Die now on Max.

And if you're an Emmy voter, it is up for nomination.

So for your consideration.

You know, I don't think True TV or Zazlov or anyone in that fucked up conglomerate of cluster fucks is going to be putting any marketing money behind it because I don't think we're going to get a second season via them.

So I do love all this like anti-Zaslav shit that's out in the like coming out in the press.

Like that's exciting for a guy who personally blamed him for losing his second season of the dream job.

So like I'm stoked that people are on to this fuck.

I'm glad he made $200 million last year and the job that was the hardest I've ever worked on anything and creatively input in my life is just, you know, toast.

But I'm glad he got his $200 million in a BU speech or whatever.

Rock and roll, brother.

The funniest thing on earth was watching him get booed.

It's so funny.

Oh, my God.

I love it.

It's so gratifying.

Should have thrown Zaslov into that quiz.

Oh, yes.

He's the level four blob boss.

That was real.

He drops 200 million gold pieces when you kill him.

Yeah, he's the fucking treasure goblin.

We've only run run into one treasure goblin, but he escaped me.

I haven't killed a treasure goblin.

Every time I see the treasure goblin, I love him.

But oh, Gabris, I have to say, I've watched that show.

I've watched 101 Places the Party Before You Die.

It's incredible.

I loved it so much.

Super funny.

I've recommended it to people who don't

know my comedy friends either.

And they're like, just like big fans of it also.

So it's such a great, such a cool, unique show, first of all, and also cool to see your funny friends on TV be funny the way that they're funny and not watered down in a you know TV way, which was I appreciate that.

We wanted to bring Adam Pallet.

Yeah, me and Adam Pally.

We wanted to bring like podcast energy to TV, where we were like raw.

It's the most authentic on-camera I've ever been, I think.

Like, we're, we're so ourselves in like such a way that is either for good or for bad, depending on what you think about it.

You might not like us, which is completely reasonable, but if you like us at all, it is us.

Like, and if you dislike us, that's it, too.

Like, that we're not, you know,

I feel good about it.

No imposter syndrome for the first time in my life.

Hell yeah.

It feels good.

Wow.

Thanks so much for making time for us, Gabris.

And I won't say it to you.

I'll say it to Zaslav.

Zaslav, you, sir, got played.

Yeah.