07: The Judgmental Gamer

What's good, internet?

It is June 24th, 2025.

And this is not.

I didn't write one of these for this one.

Let me give me one second.

I'm going to come up with one on the fly.

This is a new one.

I could probably just actually, I could use the same one as last time because we didn't get to Night Raid last time.

This is not a magical island where time works in strange ways.

It's Side Story, a podcast about games and the stories we tell about them, presented by Friends at the Table and supported by our patrons at friendsatable.cash.

I'm joined today for the third time by Keith Carberry.

Fourth in a row.

Third time in a row by Keith Carberry.

And for the first time, our very own Dre, Andrew Lee Swan.

Hey, hello.

Hi.

Welcome to Side Story.

Thanks.

I'm excited to be here.

I was thinking, gosh, a few weeks ago when I was scheduled to be on the first one of these that got cursed and rescheduled.

Yeah.

And then there was another one that got cursed and rescheduled.

But I was thinking very wistfully about like, wow, I have probably been excited about the idea of talking about video games on a podcast with Austin and Keith and, you know, all the other friends at the table people for like 10 years.

And it's, it's finally happening.

We're here, baby.

huh?

I guess

since we first started streaming video games together, huh?

Uh-huh.

Yeah, that's why it's a natural extension of what we've done.

It is.

And like, we also have been talking about video games together in things like the Clapcasts, which, for people who don't know, if you only listen to a side story or if you fell off of Friends of the Table or whatever else, there's a, we do a Patreon, friendsofthetable.cash, and for $1, you get access to the Clapcast, which is like conversations we have around

the podcast, like before we actually start recording the kind of cutting room floor type material, but less so these days, like while in the middle of like an episode of something, much more like, no, not everybody's here yet.

Let's all talk about the news or yachts or a video game that we've all been playing.

And so we've been doing some video game talk over there for years, but nothing quite like this, I guess.

Yeah, no, nothing during structure.

Oh, yeah, obviously, yeah, during streams and stuff, which like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dre Yumi and Art just recently streamed

some NBA 2K.

We got to get back to that.

We do.

I've got to figure out how to use Cheat Engine so that we don't have to grind the whole time for the player to not suck anymore.

But yeah, once I figure that out, we got to get back in there because I got to see how Spikely's Magnum Opus ends.

I got to learn more about Frequency Vibrations.

A name that I obviously love greatly as a fucked up name lover.

The main character of the NBA 2K 16.

Is that right?

Yeah, 2K story mode.

Okay.

Talking about freak.

Talking about freak.

I'm talking about freak.

In case it was unclear, we're talking about freak.

Not the game.

Not the game.

Other stuff, Dre.

I guess people don't know.

You're over on Media Club Plus.

Also, y'all are closing in on the end of Hunter Hunter.

Gosh.

Yeah, we are recording our second to last recording.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tomorrow.

Yeah, that's that's wild.

But yeah, you can hear me over on Media Club Plus.

Since you are listening to this as a Patreon subscriber, you probably also have access to the Media Club Plus bonus stuff.

Oh, I forgot it's not.

This is out there.

This is just

out there.

This is just so good.

I forget that we give it away for free.

You know what I'm saying?

I do.

There you go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good recovery on that one.

Well, if you do support us over at friendsatthetable.cash, there's a couple of Media Club Plus bonus episodes for a bunch of different stuff.

Specifically, the ones that I brought to share were about a little show called Dragon Ball Z.

If you've heard of it.

Reading the name off a card.

It's called right here, Dragon Ball Z, it says.

Dragon Ball Z.

Dragon Ball Z.

I have two things here.

The first is, Keith, can you hit us with the Dragon Ball Z dub announcer?

Because I heard you do that at Media Club Plus recently, and it killed me.

Dragon Ball Z.

Any sound.

Any sound.

It's unbelievable, this guy.

The second thing is I recently fell into a nightmare trap.

I had

a tooth

procedure, as I am want to do, apparently.

Yeah.

Last week.

It's fucked me up.

And you want to do these.

Yeah, I want to.

I love it.

It's so good.

I want,

as I am want to do, I suppose.

No, that's what you said.

You said that.

Okay, good, good, good.

I want to make sure I didn't fuck it up.

Okay.

You know, when you get like, you're sick and you're like home from school when you're a child, which I'm not anymore, but you're like, I know, I'll watch Wings on the USA network or whatever, right?

Or I'll watch the prices right.

This is how I watched Half of Mash.

Right.

And this is the thing.

You end up getting into like, oh, there's a show that's just on TV.

There's, or, or even, you know, when I was like in college or when I was in grad school, especially, it was like, oh, like, there's a show I've been meaning to watch that I, I don't want to, I'm not going to find time in my life for it.

It's long, but I'll put it on while I'm sick.

This sounds like what I'm going to say is I re-watched Dragon Ball Z or I watched Super finally.

No, I re-watched a ton of Dragon Ball Fighter Z

because I have a fucking, there's a clip in my head of a commentator doing a sort of butchered version of what Goku Black Rose says.

And I was like, I have to find him.

I have an earworm in my head of a guy being like, you know, I don't remember the, Dre, you watch Super.

You both watched Super?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have seen all of Super.

And he's like, it's like, it's like, it's until like a rose or something like that about his colour.

The Goku Black.

Yeah.

Who, how do you explain Goku Black?

In another dimension.

There's a guy who's obsessed with Goku.

Goku.

It's a god who's obsessed with Goku after Goku fights him and beats him.

Then he's like, this is impossible.

He can't beat me.

I'm a god.

And so his answer is to, he goes into another universe, separate universe.

We're now on third universe.

Finds a Goku, kills him, takes his body.

But isn't it not a different guy?

It's the same guy.

It's not.

Sorry, is there never a point where Zamazu Zamazu

and Goku Black are

because I've seen them do like a.

I've seen them fuse.

Yes, they are separate.

I think he like

splits his spirit or something like that.

I see.

I see.

Okay.

Anyway, he like gets his special pink-haired Super Saiyan mode

and he calls it Super Saiyan Rose, which is incredible.

I love it.

It's incredible.

Yeah, no, it's sick.

It's so much better than Super Saiyan Blue.

Oh, it's so much better than Super Saiyan Blue.

How do you think it stacks up to Ultra Instinct?

I don't like Ultra Hair Instinct.

I haven't seen anything.

I don't know.

All I know is what I've seen in third-party materials, you know?

I'm ambivalent about Ultra Instinct.

Yeah.

I like the idea, and I like the Toriyama thing of like making the strongest version of Goku closer to what Goku just looks like normally, which is why I liked the Goku red before Super Saiyan Blue that they immediately get rid of after that

movie.

What is that?

Is that Super Saiyan?

That's not Super Saiyan God.

It's Super Saiyan God.

It is Super Saiyan God.

Oh, Super Saiyan Blue is going Super Saiyan as a Super Saiyan God.

Super Saiyan God.

Super Saiyan.

Yeah.

I said red because he glows red like in Kaoken, which is also impartial to KOKen.

Yeah, of course.

But there then is a red-haired version that is not what I'm talking about.

He does bring KOKen back in Super.

Yeah, he does what I think fans have been saying since like

post-Frieza, which is like, why doesn't he go KOKen and Super Saiyan at the same time?

Yeah.

And then he does it.

And that doesn't work.

It probably works for exactly long enough for it to be like...

Yeah.

And then he loses.

I mean, then he has to figure out how to get Super Saiyan.

Or he passes out Super Saiyan.

Yeah.

He says, he says he in the show, Super Saiyan, in the show, Goku Black, Goku from a different universe, who's been taken over by an evil god, says something like, you know,

my power is like a rose, or something like that.

I guess I'll call it Super Saiyan Rose.

What do you think of it?

Quite the color, huh?

In keeping with how you like to label your power levels, the name of this one is Rose.

That's right.

I have now reached Super Saiyan Rose.

Hold on, Super Saiyan Rose?

or something.

But there's like Yipes or some other FGC commentator had a version of that that feels like it was a fan sub read of it that he read and like got in his head.

And he said it a bunch whenever Goku Black would come on screen.

And so I was like, well, I have to go watch.

every

match with Goku Black in it from 2017 through 2019.

I know it was pre-COVID.

I'm pretty sure it was pre-COVID.

And I didn't find it, which makes me think it was one tournament where a different guy said it a bunch and it wasn't like a recurring bit.

But I'll tell you what, fucking Dragon Ball Fighter Z kicks ass, man.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a really cool game.

That game was so good.

I watched it.

I wish I had the fighter game thing so that I could have played it more.

Same.

I honestly think, like, if you just go back, I'll link you to some good matches.

There's a, there's a, there's a sequence between Goichi and Leffin that is like an all-time,

Like, it's, the thing about that game that was so powerful to me was how much it captured Dragon Ball Z.

And

it literalized a lot of the, and it leveraged a lot of the rhythms of Shounen anime in a fight so that like

the crowd was just so into it, even if they couldn't, even if they didn't know.

what spending a meter would mean in a particular fighting game, you know, they were spending a resource or whatever, the feel of two characters clashing, of a character getting all of the Dragon Balls and making a wish to bring someone back, all this was in that game in a way that, like, oh, it was good.

Yeah.

Yep.

Anyway.

It's a sh.

Sorry.

Okay.

No, we shouldn't talk more about Dragon Ball Z.

Why not?

Why shouldn't we?

Yeah, why shouldn't we?

Did we all play Sparking Zero?

No, I have not played it.

That's the.

That's the one that came out last year.

That's the new Buddha Kai, right?

It's the new Budokai.

It was it.

It was not good.

I was very surprised because the chorus about that game when it came out was like, oh my god, they finally made a good Dragon Ball Z game again, which I really think is nostalgia for those old Budokai games.

Unequivocally, Sparking Zero is worse than every single one of the Budokai and Budokai Tenkaiji games.

Damn.

It is, it is so weird.

It's very hard, but it's not hard in like a fun, challenging way.

It just like doesn't, nothing really feels right.

They went so they went perfect on the visuals of like, this is like exactly how this stuff should look in a game but then everything you're doing i think feels terrible i did not understand the love around that's an arena fighter in the way that the budokai games it is like third-person ish fighting

okay and that's what i i was thinking about the fighter z reminded me of it because when sparking zero came out i was like i don't even like the sort of side-on street fighter style fighting game Fighter Z was leagues more fun to play and do than Sparking Zero, which is the kind of game I am interested in playing.

Right, right, right, right.

Yeah, I played all those Budokai games when they were coming out, or at least, you know, I played one and three and ten Kaiichi or whatever.

There was a bunch of them.

There was a bunch of them.

And at some point, I stopped playing the bad DBZ games.

I started playing the bad Gundam games.

Because

that's the arc.

I was no longer a child, so I put away children.

That's what I'm saying.

You put

childish things.

That's right.

That's right.

Little Austin very seriously moving a Goku figurine aside and saying, it's time for the robots.

Yeah, it's time to put, yeah, I put my Gundam wing model up on the up on the shelf.

It was up there next to my Goku and my Piccolo and everything else as a 13-year-old for sure.

So

definitely,

it took until I was like 19 when I was like, ah, yes.

Mobile suit Gundam Federation for Xeon for the PS2.

It really captures

the kind of monotony and rhythm of a war.

and it's just an arena fighter it's just an arena fighter with with a mission mode is all it is uh but you know always been you know i was who i was before i got here as they say dynasty warriors gundam it really likes dynasty now now see to be clear too i don't like dynasty warriors gundam for two important reasons one

That's not what I go to Gundam for.

It's why I'm not a big wing guy.

I don't go to Gundam for one mech killing thousands of mechs.

It's not what I go to mechs for.

I go to mechs for like a pilot has a rival, you know?

I want 1v4 to feel kind of scary, not 1v400 to feel kind of nothing, you know?

But you take the skin off of it.

I know you like Dynasty Wars.

I love Dynasty Wars.

Yeah.

100%.

Because

I go to Romance of the Three Kingdoms because Lu Bu is a badass, because Guan Yu is a badass.

And they are the kind of personification of this larger.

And it's just a different genre space.

It's just, it's just 1,500-year-old Gundam Wing.

But I don't like Gundam Wing.

Exactly.

And I, I, the difference is Guan Yu kicks ass, and it turns out that Wu Fei sucks shit.

Like, yeah, yeah.

I, uh, I really wish I could add a perspective here on Dynasty Warriors Gundam.

Yeah.

But I'm realizing, uh, full disclosure, I don't think I can because I want a copy of that game for free from a blog that probably hasn't existed for 20 years.

Oh, you, okay, I see.

Thank you for, thank you for disclosing your

ethical here.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's very, it's important to be very upfront about the ethics in the situation.

You know, I didn't buy the game, so I could have been swayed.

We're about to talk about a game where we got code.

So

we gotta, you know, clear all our bases up top.

Delete that, delete that, delete that.

Delete that.

I'll definitely have deleted it.

I definitely didn't leave it in.

Just really quick, the other reason I'm not a big Dynasty Warriors Gundam person is in the U.S., those games, or at least the first one, maybe the third one, didn't get licensed for the Gundam music.

And it's such an important thing.

Oh, yeah, that's right of Gundam to me.

It's like, if you're gonna, if you're gonna have Ombaro right out there, you have to have the funkiest beats you've ever heard.

Oh, yeah.

Because that's what OG Gundam, that's what First Gundam has, you know?

Although, this, this did, this has happened before, but it worked out really well, which is the Digimon movie, which had a whole new soundtrack and also was awesome.

Interesting.

For some reason, they could.

They're both good.

One of them is, one of them has aged really poorly because of the

dub of the Digimon movie is like the earliest 2000s shit you can imagine.

And

the sub doesn't like feel dated to me in that way.

Maybe it might if you're from Japan, but it's a ton of fun.

This soundtrack is crazy, Keith.

Are you looking at the soundtrack?

Yeah,

assuming Google's not lying to me.

Hold on, let me click on a link just to make sure that Google is not lying to me.

Okay.

Google Eye drops.

I'm going to go ahead and show says, Yeah, it's making up what's in it.

Let's see.

There's less than Jake in here.

Wow.

Smash Mouth.

What might you might be boss?

The impression that I get is just in here.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, it seems like they got every song by, like, if you named a band and said, hey, name that song you know by them.

That's most of the songs.

That is, that is.

It's all-star.

It's, yeah, it is.

Wow.

This is wild.

Well, it's a very, it's very funny.

This is very 2000 to me.

Yeah.

Oh, you know,

this would never, this would never have happened after 9-11.

Post-2001.

It's true.

We never would have gotten it.

No one is letting them put Kids in America by Len

in a kids movie in November 2021.

When did the Men in Black movie come out?

Was that 90, 97, 97?

See, different times.

I just remember that as peak movie soundtrack.

All the Pokemon movies had

big song tie-ins for the first couple, right?

I think so.

That sounds right.

Yes, yeah, totally.

They all had like Disney Channel pop stars on them.

That's what I thought.

Those are also 99, 2000, huh?

2000 Pokemon Forever, the one with

Celebi.

Is that the name of the Pokemon?

The Little Green Guy?

Yeah, yeah, the Little Green Guy.

Celebi.

That's 2000.

That's the first one that comes out in 2001.

Actually, that's still pretty 9-11.

Pokemon Heroes, the first post-9-11 Pokemon movie.

In this essay, I will argue.

By the way, I remembered that the movie Jimmy Neutron had Kids in America, but crucially, it wasn't Kids in America by Len.

It was Kids in America by No Secrets.

So I'm still right.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

Good.

That was 2002.

So, yeah.

The code that we were sent was for Elden Ring Night Rain.

And we played a bunch of that.

We streamed some of it.

We did.

I played a bunch of it with y'all.

I guess Keith, you and I have played a little bit more of it than Dre, you and me have played.

I've also played with some other folks.

It is, for people who have, don't follow the Elden Ring, I actually think truly, if you don't follow this type of game, the Fromsoft games, the Soulsborn games, and all you caught was early chatter and marketing, you might think this is a different thing than it is.

And if you don't listen to other games podcasts, I think at this point.

Because Keith, you thought it was something different than than it was, even, right?

Right.

I very much thought it was going to be like a Fortnite or Call of Duty Warzone.

Where it had like a Helden Rain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there, you know, part of that is it's called Night Rain, R-E-I-G-N, but there is rain, R-A-I-N, in it that closes in magical kill you rain will close in like a circle around you.

You and up to two friends as you do a sort of run across this sort of Mishmash version of one of the first zones of Elden Ring that's been kind of reworked and turned into a different map.

You are, you kind of have two runs on this map

that is kind of scattered over with special locations like fortresses and base camps and churches, all of which have gear and loot and bosses and opportunities to level up.

It's run-based the way a a roguelike might be.

And there's some degree of either procedural generation or a pool of these kind of map variants.

And you're going around to level up so that you can, at the end of when the circle closes in all the way the first time, you fight a boss.

Then it opens back up if you beat the boss, like the boss of the first night.

Then you do it all again and you fight the boss of the second night.

And hopefully you're strong enough at that point because then you go to a special arena to fight the Knight Lord, which is one of these kind of eight special bosses bosses uh that are are brand new uh newly designed bosses specifically with some mechanics built towards multiplayer in mind uh most obviously in the very first of the bosses when you have to beat to open up the big boss menu um because you pick which boss you want to go after after this the first one is like a big uh dog uh kind of a three-headed dog that can split into three heads or into three bodies like what if cerberus could pull itself apart into three different bodies that could fuck you up um and so obviously in the three-person game there's a lot of like okay let's just run from these guys right now or like let's just try to like I'll try to tank two of them while you go heal or whatever um and so yeah it's a game in some ways it it feels more like a game like risk of rain um

uh than a game like fortnight or tarkov uh it reminds me a little bit of a deck builder in the sort of like you're putting together your your your character build over the course of 30 minutes and you're like all right i guess i or it reminds me like ftl ftl is very much like this, too, where it's like, okay, I gotta put this fucking spaceship together, and I better be good enough to beat the final boss, you know?

Except that game had one final boss that always kind of needed the same type of build, basically.

But yeah, that's the gist.

And then the other bosses that you find along the way, whether the ones that are spread throughout the map or the ones that show up at the end of the first and second nights, are previous Elden Ring bosses and a handful of previous Souls bosses.

That's like the very short one, short description of it.

What are your your first impressions of it like when you dre you and you me and keith played once and it seemed like you had a pretty good time i did holy shit that game is fast that is the first thing that stood out to me is just how much faster everything is compared to like any other souls game i have ever played uh even just your base move speed is like so so quick it doesn't cost you like any stamina to sprint you have like a super duper sprint you got a super duper sprint you do gosh it's more importantly, I gotta say, it does.

There's no fall damage.

There's no fall damage.

There's no fall damage.

There's big jump pads, like air boost pads that will leap you or like jump you up hundreds and hundreds of feet.

There are birds you can hold on to, spirit birds, that will like ferry you across the map.

I don't remember if we did one of those or not.

We did, yeah.

Okay.

We used the Fortnite bounce pad to pop our glider.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's right.

Fuck, it is Fortnite.

Damn it.

But the, but the, you know, the, um,

I will say the, that feeling of speed, it's something they've played with before.

You know, Sekaro

can feel fast in moments.

Bloodborne, obviously, was, was, you know, notable because it felt like a game about getting you out from behind your shield and forcing you to engage differently.

But it's different.

It's fast in a more zoomed-out way, not in the independent mechanics of movement and attacking, which are basically, more or less, not exactly, the same as Elden Ring.

i guess the big difference is there they're not uh it's not blank sight characters or characters who have built-in abilities um uh and they also have kind of like passive buffs that you can uh equip before you go into a run um uh but uh this is the the speed is is at the meta level of traversal and exploration you know i think these games for me i don't know keith i know you're a sekaro guy dre i don't know what your what your relationship is i have actually i have not played sekaro or bloodborne i i think those are the only solos games that i haven't at least like played some of then you know that like for you know i think for most people the way you move through those games is like even if you're playing a pretty active uh build that's about parries and about um

you know fast attacks a high dex build or something you're still moving around the space carefully and trying to like yeah learn what's where and what pathways to take and is it safe around this corner andrea when you say this game is fast it's fast in those spaces where it's like, all right, let's just fucking go to the church.

We'll get an extra flask.

Then we'll run to the mine.

We'll drop down through the mine.

Ignore all those randoms.

We're not going to fight all these random guys who are just mining.

We're going to go fight the big giant boss.

We'll get the best.

You'll actually have a stake to fight those guys.

That's right.

Yeah.

This is exactly what I was going to say.

That it's, it's so urgent.

It's not just care.

It's not just that, like, it's not careful like the other games.

There's like, you have to go.

We have to hurry.

Yeah.

And the like same thing happens with your build and your stats and what weapons you use.

At least for me, who was like new to all that stuff and like didn't know like, okay, what stat should I be prioritizing is the big bird guy.

And so like, it all just felt so fast.

It was just like, there was a time where I dropped what was a pretty good weapon.

And I think you ended up picking it up, Austin.

And I knew that, but I was like, by the time it would take me to explain to Austin what happened and to get him to drop that weapon back to me, we would have like already missed what we were trying to do.

trying to do so fuck it let's just let's just go go go go yeah fuck it we and then you ended up with the best weapon that i've ever seen Yeah, what did you end up with in that run?

I forget.

I forget what it was called, but it was the...

It was the Jiren Doll, like the planet in partisan.

Yeah.

That's right.

It had the Black Flame Cyclone skill, which just like destroyed everything up until like the second to last boss.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's part of the thing that's so interesting to me about this is,

you know, you recognized that skill from your time with Elden Ring as being like a badass skill, right?

And like, so it's not like it isn't

player knowledge

or care.

It's just that for people who've already played Elden Ring, that care all came already from a year or two ago when they played Elden Ring or three.

You know, when they played Elden Ring, we were like, oh, yeah, Black Flame, you know, Whirlwind, Tornado, whatever.

That shit is sick.

Cool.

And now you can see it and go, okay, yes.

And I actually kind of curious about that for you, Keith, as someone who has not played a lot of Elden Ring.

Or you played some of it when it launched, but like,

do you feel, do you feel like overrushed in terms of making gear decisions and stuff like that?

Uh, I definitely did like for the first few hours of playing, where I was like,

you know, it tells you damage, but it doesn't tell you damage per second.

I can't tell by looking at the picture if it's going to be a huge weapon or a small weapon.

There's no like real indication.

Like, is this a great sword or just a horn?

It's a quarter next to the sword, so you know if it's big or not, or like a

low-level enemy, you know what I mean?

Yeah,

I was playing the last couple rounds that I played, I was playing with Wilder, who is like the first character that they make you play as in the tutorial.

Um, and I had a skill that gave me a special bonus for using great swords, and I spent the whole two full rounds being like, what is a great sword?

Like, which ones of these are great swords?

And that is the most recent stuff, so it still is happening.

That I'm like, I don't, I'm not sure about some of these stats.

Like, I don't know, you know, the weapons that give you bonuses for things.

Like, Dre was talking about being worried about stats, and the game is not worried about stats at all because you level up, it just levels everything up for you.

But there are like sub-stats on weapons that are very useful and kind of interpreting, like, is this useful for me?

Is this like, am I playing as a character that needs five poise?

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I gotta tell you,

especially when it's like, when you beat a boss and it's like the drop is you pick between a weapon or like a boon, which I think was at least some of the ones that I saw.

Yeah, definitely.

You'll get something that's like, you know, bonus health.

Or, you know, a classic one, you beat one of the,

there are these things called Ever Jails where you can find keys to open them up.

They are kind of these platforms on the ground or these kind of like

almost like a small like

indented, not a crater, but like something like a bowl.

It's kind of like a cement bowl.

And you go in there and you summon a boss to fight in there.

A very shallow bowl.

It's not like a very deep bowl.

You know what I mean?

And when you beat them, a classic option you'll get is like, oh yeah, a bonus stamina recovery or 10,000 runes.

Runes are like the currency to level up in Elden Ring.

And it's like, okay, well, like, do I, am I a character who needs that stamina boost?

Or is the 10,000 runes enough for me to level up?

Is that, it would be more important for me to just get another level or to get a stamina recovery or to get this whip or whatever?

It says it's a good damage whip.

Are whips any good?

You know, um, I do think that there's that that that can be tough.

And keep there, are stats in this game, they're just kind of obscure.

Um, sorry, yeah, that's what I mean.

They're like, you love, you just hit A to level up, that's right, but like Eldener, where you have to pick, like, do I need strength?

Is it clear to you that different characters have different stats?

Yes, okay, yeah, because, like, for instance, I would say it is not clear as in in, like,

I can see it happening.

It's clear mentally as in, I just knew that that would be true, that the tank guy will have a different distribution than the Bose.

The Bose guy, right?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And that is, and, and, you know, there is like

it's tough because it's like to some degree, so much of what has made those games work so well for years is a community forming around the gaps in knowledge, right?

Where it's like, oh, people want to know how does magic scale?

Magic scales differently than physical attacks.

And, you know, oh, there's different soft caps and there's different, and like people doing that work is part of the engine that has made that series and from soft games like be so popular is that people get to like go on Reddit and argue about stat scaling.

And so

I get that there's that that's there for a good reason.

But I also do, I've definitely seen people be like, wait, why the fuck does magic scale differently than swords?

Why wouldn't you just make that be the same?

And it's not necessarily super clear that that's even the case in the game.

Though there are some resources in the game to be like, like, if you want to go find out what all the great swords are, you can go to the sparring zone and just pull up all of them.

But then, like, you got to flashcard them.

Like, what are you going to do?

Yeah.

Right.

And it's not like in

any of the other Souls games where you can kill everybody in an area and stand still and go online and look it up.

That's right.

Because you have the fire that is moving towards you and will kill you in one second.

Which is part of the joy at the same time because it, like, right, it breaks.

I've seen it break people out of the sort of paralysis, the decision paralysis that they would normally get hit by.

It all works towards the end of what I think the game is really asking of you, which is to just be good at the fighting,

like to be physically, like mechanically competent at

like hitting the boss and not being hit by the boss.

Yeah, just be good enough at the

guts of it that the build

can push you across the finish line, but

it can't drag you across the finish line from a mile out.

You know, you got to get close.

And then you have to have a hit.

Having a gold weapon that does something special every time you like hit isn't going to stop the fire dog from like burning you into a crisp in one hit.

I've been trying to tell people this about American politics for a long time and they keep trying to get the golden weapons and I'm like, it's not going to help you.

That's not the way to do it.

Cursed.

I mean, we ended up having a really good run the first time the three of us played together.

I think, Keith, at that point, you and I had played and bounced off of the first boss, the three-headed dog, like two or three times.

We had like a couple of good runs at it, right?

Yeah, I think that we fought at least four times that dog.

That makes sense.

And we brought Dre on, and this is no shade to our other

player,

who did a great job.

But Dre was, was you know, Dre came on, and we had the magic run.

We had the perfect feeling of like, I think, I think we're doing a pretty good.

Actually, we played twice.

The first run, we felt like perfect, right?

And then the second one was a worse.

It was like kind of scuffed and we still pulled it out.

Is that right?

Yeah,

that's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which feels even better.

It feels even better than, oh, we all have great gear to be like, fuck, like, we died, we lost some levels, we got our shit back, but like, we're kind of in a, in a rut right now.

Can we pull this out?

And then you pull it out.

It feels incredible.

Yeah, that's where I think a lot of people stumble in games like that where you're you have that feeling of wow, this is such a good run, and it doesn't stop the game from being a game where when you lose, you have to start over.

And that hurts.

That can hurt people enough to where they say, I hate roguelikes.

Yeah, totally.

I've been thinking about this a lot because, like,

I come in, I come at this as someone who's been playing roguelikes for 20-something years, right?

Like, I long longer than that, maybe.

I I don't know.

I, I, I, you know, played some early roguelikes on PC on a laptop when I was in high school, you know, uh, and then I got really into them, uh, I would say, in 2007, 2007, 2008, um, starting with Sheer and the Wanderer on DS.

And then I played a bunch of Engband, and I played a bunch, I played a bunch of like, like classic old-school, ASCII-ass

roguelikes on PC.

Um, and so I have become very annoyed to the feeling of loss in the way that, like, you know, back in the day, Dwarf Fortress.

I have become annoyed to the feeling of loss.

Yeah.

Stamp that on Friends of the Table.

Fucking A.

But like, you know, the losing is fun mentality that Dwarf Fortress, you know, has been, has been yelling about for decades now.

I took, you know, a lot, I just found myself liking that.

So I, so I know that I'm coming into this with a lot of bias.

But a thing that I keep thinking about when it's like, when people feel like, oh, I've wasted my time playing this run of night rain because I didn't win is like, don't you like, you play Fortnite.

You don't win at Fortnite every game.

And my point there is actually not you're such a hypocrite.

It's okay.

Something interesting is happening that someone who doesn't mind losing at Fortnite or Warzone or any of these other games does feel bad losing at the multiplayer or the single player cooperative or multiplayer cooperative game.

There's something something happening that's different there.

And I'm trying to untangle what that is besides the presence of other players.

I mean, I think that maybe this is not a totally unique situation.

I feel powerfully about a less generous read

where I feel fine calling those people hypocrites.

Oh, yeah.

Well, that's you.

Yeah.

And

maybe they don't.

enjoy playing Fortnite, but they just keep doing it.

But they, okay, but then what we're getting at is a difference in terminology where in which when I say enjoy, I don't necessarily mean a person has to write down on a piece of paper that they enjoy it.

I mean that they, for some reason, are repeatedly continuing in action, right?

And some people will stop repeatedly playing a game like Night Rain and give as the reason or feel as the reason and then report potentially honestly,

I feel bad when I lose in this.

But they don't report that feeling, even though they're getting washed by 16-year-olds in no-build mode.

But her especially in no build mode, especially this season.

Is that you, Dre?

Are you getting washed by 16-year-olds in Fortnite?

It's me and all of my old Fortnite friends.

We're all like, why are we getting, we are getting nothing but the sweatiest drops this season?

I think they have like,

I think they have dropped the number of bots that they are putting in lobbies.

And so you're getting more lobbies that are mostly

players.

Yeah, I'm getting pure Fortnite.

Uncut Fortnite.

I can't keep up with that shit anymore.

Yeah.

If I ever could.

I think it has to do, Austin, we talked about maybe on the last episode or something about the Fortnite has like a social gravity to it.

Yes.

That

Elden Ring, or not Elden Ring, Night Rain

could have.

But like because

Elden Ring sort of feels more like a roguelike and because other games that are roguelikes tell you that they're roguelikes, you get to identify all of those things from the marketing, from the jump before you've played it.

You've already like sort of presupposed, like, oh, this is a game where I'm going to be like dying and having to start over

without connecting it to my favorite game is Fortnite, the game where you die and have to start over.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, like, the vibes are just so different too, though.

Like, just like you look at a screenshot of Fortnite and a screenshot of Night Rain.

Like, I think there is something to.

it, it reminds me of Viva Pinata.

Viva Pinata was a game I remember being like incredibly deep.

If you were that kind of person, yeah.

And I think it ensnared a lot of people into becoming that kind of person because, oh man, look at these cute little pinata.

I'm a Pokemon right now, Dre.

So it is like, that is also the Pokemon thing, you know?

Like, yeah, you start getting into EVs and IVs.

And I, I don't mean the Pokemon.

I don't even mean EVs.

Weird stats.

Yeah.

Which

we can't go down the Pokemon Road today.

We have too much else to talk about, but

I do want to come back to Pokemon at some point because I'm finally playing Scarlet and Violet.

I'm playing Violet.

That is what I thought we were talking about today.

Well, Pokemon.

I did see at 7.30 when you sent the thing that we were talking about

Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma next.

Only because I know Dre's been playing it, and I don't know when we'll next line up a chance to see Dre.

Whereas Keith, I know you and me have a very similar schedule, and so I don't think it's going to be hard to get you and me in a room to talk about Pokemon.

I think we're going to be able to do that whenever the fuck we want.

We'll talk about Pokemon with anyone and anywhere.

So I've seen, so I know.

People should go watch you and Allie play the Poke MMO, the Poke MMO,

which is a fan-made

game combining all of the Pokemon games, right?

And then you can play every Pokemon game at the same time, surrounded by other people also doing that.

If that sounds good to you, or you can just watch

Keith and Allie do it, which is what I did and felt pretty good about it.

Anyway, but yeah, Dre, I do think that you're right about that.

And

I have not been a Fortnite guy, except for that one week where we played Fortnite every day on, or whatever.

It wasn't a week, obviously.

It was a Fortnite of Fortnite.

It was a Fortnite of Fortnite.

It was a Fortnite of Fortnite for Waypoint.

But I've always been like, oh, yeah, they crushed the aesthetic here.

They understood the assignment.

They made a game that is radically appealing to the widest possible margin of players.

That does not mean that I happen to like it particularly well in terms of

aesthetic is the word that you use because they did crush the aesthetic.

They have taken it.

They have taken many aesthetics and crushed it

into sort of like a car being pulverized at a junkyard into cubes.

Yeah, or if you cannot tell that one of these was a Corolla and one of these was an Audi.

Or if, you know, for instance, you once had these beautiful lumbering beasts walking the planet called dinosaurs, and then they died.

And then, millions of years later, you scooped up their remains and called it oil, and you crushed it down until it was plastic.

And then you put the things you made in 99 cent stores and called them toys.

That's

filling my car up with

Master Chief.

Oh, God.

Yeah,

that's what the MPG is: the Master Chiefs per gallon.

Anyway, yes.

So, you know, I do think, though, I have seen some people, I have seen Night Reign slowly become more like the Fortnite of

let's just hang out and do a couple runs.

You know, you get over the hump of what is it?

You learn that Wilder need, you know, has a build with great swords where he can do a cool fire attack, which is super useful because it means he always has the ability to set things on fire and do fire damage to things that are weak to fire.

And then you know what all the great swords are, or you know enough to make a guess, and then you can just kind of hang out there.

And I kind of

mean, I love games like that.

I remember playing Guild Wars years ago, just like jumping around, chatting on voice in Guild Wars.

What you're describing sounds a lot to me like Prime Destiny 1

gameplay for me.

Well, and that's the thing that I'm like, I think one of the most interesting conversations before this game came out was like, hey, are they selling out?

like are they are they making a game that's you know last episode we talked a lot about the summer games fest and a lot about uh gooner games and the feeling of like trying to just like chase a demographic you know uh and the heart not really your heart not really being in it yeah in that way you're not being gross and you're not shit enough

Right, yeah, you don't you don't you're not really about that life.

Yeah,

exactly.

Um no, there are to be clear, there are some people who are really about that life.

There are some people who are really about that life.

But there are a lot of people who it feels like they're tracking a box to try to get people to pay attention to their third-person sci-fi action adventure game.

And the TNA is there to get your attention in the sex sells way.

And not even in the I like it way.

In any case,

even if they do like it, it doesn't feel like it's in the game because they like it.

And there are people that it feels like it's in the game because they like it.

And I think I feel like I can tell the difference in those things.

And

that is my right as a consumer to make that judgment and to sense when I think it's off.

Austin Consumer Rights Walker.

That's me.

You know that about me.

So can we expect your top 10 list of Gooner games that go for it in the real way to be on HBO meeting?

You can't be.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry.

To be clear, if you're going for it, you are not a gooner game.

I see.

Do you see what I mean?

I see.

You're just a perverts game, like Death Stranding 2 out this week, right?

Like, which I've not played, but I'm sure that's a perverts game.

And in this case, in the hierarchy, perverts game is more in it for the love of the game than I am not setting up, you know that I'm not really about hierarchy, but I should.

Yes, the definition is right, Dre.

I do think it's in it for the love of the game.

I think Hideo Kojima's brain is just like that.

oh yeah

100 yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah intentionally saying it oozes out of everything that he makes uh-huh and i don't like it all the time no but you don't think you have to like that to move product do you know what i mean yeah

anyway so we're back we're back on old the point in the same way that you can take the TNA out of the game to market it better, you can put it back in to market it better.

That's right.

Or either way, it's for the market.

It's for the market.

That's right.

And I don't, where the, okay.

Then the point is, I think that there were some folks who,

there was a lot of conversation when Nightrein was first announced, and then especially after Duskbloods, their

Switch 2 exclusive game that's coming out, I think, next year,

the next TrumpSoft multiplayer thing.

I think there were some people again talking about.

I'm talking shit about it.

I was like, this looks pretty good.

Try to get to.

Part of what they're saying, part of what I've seen is people saying, this feels like chasing a trend.

This feels like a publisher saying, hey, you should make a game that is Fortnite adjacent because that's where the money is.

You should reuse your assets so that you can cash in and do XYZ.

And I'm not going to say the budget.

of reusing assets, the budget choice is not,

you know, probably part of the decision-making process that goes into greenlighting a game like this is you get to say to your publisher, we can do this without spending a fortune on new assets is 100% part of how FirmSoft has always worked.

They've always reused old animation rigs, old animations, et cetera.

Like, you know, even some models directly.

So I'm not saying that it's not part of some sort of calculus, but I actually think that if they wanted to do the sellout cash-in Elden Ring thing, they would have just made a fucking destiny out of all the shit they already had.

To go back to your point, Dre, of like they would have just put full co-op, they would have re-released the game for 40 bucks and said, this is the co-op version of it.

And there's dailies.

And there's, you know,

there's, we'll put these, this, these types of bosses just in the world.

I think there's a much more cynical version of the game that is built around that sort of thing.

And it's cycling seasonal events that are just the same 12 bosses with like inflated stats that rotate every two weeks or whatever.

How long did you play?

How long did you play Destiny 4, Trey?

I don't remember.

Not crazy long, actually.

okay uh but yeah like that's that to me feels like uh there's a there is there are other versions of the cache in here and instead i think they made something kind of like experimental and weird and off-putting to certain folks which i think is a sign of life from the studio um so yeah i'm i'm personally pretty happy with it um yeah it very much feels like a game that is trying that is like doing something and has a purpose and has a vision that they are like executing on 100 i had this great

version, this great run of it about a week and a half ago where I'd been playing with some folks who had beaten the first boss, but not beaten anybody else yet

and had not really dug into, and I don't know if either of you have seen this, the shifting earth stuff in this game.

No, I have not yet.

Okay.

So

there are five versions of the map.

There's like the regular version that everyone's used to.

There's way more than that because things like churches and castles and stuff can move around.

But there are these other versions that will have a major different feature on the map, like a snowy mountain or

a city, you know, one of the like a take on one of the underground cities from the base game,

one of the Nox type cities.

And then there's one that's called the crater, which is a

deep hole in the ground that goes down to like a lava pit floor.

And around the edges of it is a slowly descending kind of ramp/slash a temple type thing that you can kind of delve down into.

These things are kind of structured like the dungeons from Elden Ring proper or like the level design in something like Dark Souls.

And you can run through them like a regular ass level.

You know, there's bosses along the way.

They are huge.

Like the crater takes up basically the whole northern half of the map, like the north center of the map.

And if you can complete one of these shifting earth kind of dungeons, you get something special.

So at the very bottom of the

crater is a forge.

And if you get to the forge, it summons a big boss, a big magma boss.

You beat the boss and you can go up to the forge and turn any of your weapons into a golden tier four weapon, which is incredible.

But then you're at the bottom of a magma pit.

And so you have to like get to one of those spirit birds to let you out.

And inevitably, like, this is the thing you cannot do on day one.

You have to do it on day two.

I mean, I couldn't do it on day one.

I bet some pros could do it on day one, but I am not like them.

And then you have to get the fuck out before the rain closes in on you because like inevitably it takes you the whole second day or a lot of the second day to do it.

And that feeling is just incredible.

Being able to like, I like led people through there who had not gotten too deep into it before and had the great moment of being like, no, I haven't actually succeeded at this before, but I do know where I'm going.

Like, follow me, we'll get to where the loot is.

We'll have to get out.

We'll have to figure out how to get out.

I've never actually pulled this one off.

Uh, just like an all-time gaming experience, um, that unfortunately did end in.

Uh, we did escape, we did get to the final boss, we fought a big ice dragon, which is like truly one of the most majestic fights I've ever seen in one of their games.

And then we had a player get disconnected.

Uh, unfortunately, their computer was like, um, her computer was overheating, unfortunately, in the summer heat.

And

we could not 2v1 that dragon, unfortunately.

But it's just like when it clicks, it's so, so special.

And I'm like you, Keith.

Dusk Blast looks good to me.

It looks good to me.

I didn't even, I couldn't really even wrap my head around what people were trying to say about it.

Not that I, mostly because I didn't dig into it.

I just saw people kind of talking shit and went on about my day.

I think people are just skeptical of the multiplayer stuff, you know?

But yeah, it does sort of feel like, though, there's this like

it's easy to be judgmental about the sort of the

presentation of like feature sets.

But if you look at Night Rain and think about it for a second, it's like, where's like the money hook?

Like, Fortnite is a, is shitty because it's a live service game that sort of hooks you into playing it, hooks you into buying V-Bucks, you know, buying costumes, doing dances, like a bunch of silly stuff that a bunch of people spend a bunch of money on.

None of that's in Night Rain.

Night Rain is just a multiplayer game.

It's a multiplayer game.

It's a third-person action game from the people who brought you a bunch of third-person action games.

It is like, you know,

a series about sort of tense and thrilling fights that is presenting tense and thrilling fights in a slightly skewed way, same as my favorite by far game that they've made, Sekiro, which is like

the same kind of idea, but from a slightly different angle.

And it just feels like all of it is that to me.

It, you know, you saying that reminds me.

I once saw someone make the case that Bellatro deployed all of the same dark patterns as like free-to-play gacha games.

And it's like, I don't think that that's, first of all, that's not true.

The gacha technology is evil in ways that if you're not engaged in it, you don't know.

You don't

see how fucking devious that shit is.

But also,

you can't give Bellachro more money.

You can't do it.

Like, I mean, I guess it makes those games bad.

That's the end, and I think it's probably worth being critical of how those systems are being deployed in general.

I'm not opposed to that, generally speaking, but I think that like, you can't say that they're the same.

I think the second that you say that the same, you've maybe lost me, you know?

One of them has all of this stuff where you're seeing every time you log on what all of your friends are spending their money on.

And you are going, but I want, but I want to be able to

do the duggy.

That's that's that's any of these.

That's anything with the social component, you know?

Anytime, I mean, that's, you know, you and I have both played some of that Pokemon TCG.

Oh, yeah, totally.

Yeah.

You know, oh yeah, it's so sick that I get to see when you pull a cool card and there's a one in five chance, theoretically, that I could take take one of your cards or get a copy of one of your cards.

But really, what it is is a preview of what is in these decks that I haven't drawn yet.

Yeah.

I get to see that you got that god pull and I get to go, fuck, if Keith got the god, the god pack, maybe I could get the god pack with five special rare cards.

I have decided that that is a Halo 2 style

special armor, the flaming helmet armor, like a game virus thing where you can only have it if you've played a game with someone who could have who has it.

This is a conspiracy theory that I'm inventing.

Okay, so this is nothing.

You're

inventing this.

You're inventing.

Here's what happened.

Yeah.

My sister started playing Pokemon TCG and was talking to me about it on the phone.

And

she was like, oh, and I got a God pack.

And I was like, what the fuck?

You just started playing this game and you got one like in a week.

And she added me as a friend.

And within

24 hours, I had pulled the god pack.

Wow.

Maybe it's the photos listening.

You just get like God packed.

And then God pack.

And then I got one.

God pack.

Wow.

Within another 24 hours.

We also hadn't had one.

Again, within like 24, 48 hours had gotten one.

People who don't know a God pack in Pokemon, the trading card game,

the trading card game, Pocket included, is when you get a pack that has nothing but special holographic rare cards

instead of like Full art, you know, very like

legendary and like ultra-legendary cards.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And you, oh, holy shit.

I mean, they, they, in the real world, they will weigh packs to see if they are like, you know,

tiny

minuscule amounts of weight different to be able to confidently guess if it's a god pack or not.

Wow.

Because the art does take more ink, you know, or whatever.

They are heavier cards.

That makes perfect

heart of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

YouTube has shuffled me into Pokemon TCG.

That's so funny.

A little while ago, unfortunately, to me.

I hate all the gotcha stuff.

I do end up buying something in every game that sells something that I play.

I feel comfortable with the amount of money that I spend on these things because I only ever play one at a time.

And it's like every few months I'll be like, ah, let me buy something.

I still hate it.

I fucking hate it.

I, I, you know, I grew up around casinos, man.

Like, it's, it's, uh,

it is,

and I

somehow believe that people, like, I'm not mad at anybody.

I, I've played many gotchas.

I don't feel like I did a bad thing by playing them.

I'm not in a deep judgment of the folks playing.

I am in a deep judgment of the people building the systems that are explicitly built to exploit addictive personalities and addictive behavior.

Because the thing that triggers the feeling of I should spend a little bit of money, it's never fun.

It's not a fun component.

It's not like additive to the enjoyment of the game.

Like you get something out of winning.

But the thing itself about spinning the wheel,

that's not

a poker.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dre, I'm sure you have a bunch of, as someone who uh does therapy, you have a lot of does therapy in the therapist sense, not so much in therapy.

Uh, you have a lot of people.

You know, I'm not trying to.

Uh, damn right.

Well, so one, I'm not a behavioral psychologist, which I think is, is kind of more in the lines of this.

But I, yeah, no, it's bad, dude.

It's, it's bad.

It is, I mean, everything you're saying to me also applies to like sports betting and stuff.

Sports betting is just like

wild.

It's horrific.

It's a nightmare.

Yeah.

And like, I feel that sports betting should be legal.

I think it's probably worse for it to be illegal than legal.

But also, if we're going to do that, then we shouldn't, like, it shouldn't be legal for there to be nothing but gambling ads everywhere at all times 24-7.

I'm saying safe, legal, and rare.

Yeah.

I, uh, the moment I realized I found out that ESPN has its own sports book, its own sports betting app, I was like, what are we doing?

Like, what?

That's not.

When I was growing up, it was like verboten, you know, like you would never talk about the betting on the coverage.

And now Charles Rossley will tell you his bets, you know?

Yeah, there was like a whole thing of like Bill Simmons and like Scott Van Pelt, two big ESPN, well, in Bill Simmons' case, former ESPN people, like talking about like getting in trouble for trying to even acknowledge like odd lines like 10 years ago.

And yeah, like you said, now ESPN has its own sports book.

And if you watch anything on ESPN every 10 minutes, they say, hey, you should go on our sports book and make this bet that Stephen A.

Smith has endorsed.

Well, the lines going down, you got to juice it somewhere.

It's so bad.

Got to juice it somewhere.

You know what?

Wherever Stephen A.

Smith tells you to juice it, don't juice it there.

Stephen A.

Smith.

Is there a, oh, fuck, I almost called it the laugher curve, but that's something totally different.

Kramer, what's the Kramer?

Jim Kramer?

He has the Jim Kramer?

The Mad Money guy.

There's like a thing that will automatically

do your stocks against whatever Jim Kramer says that performs.

Oh, yeah, I've seen that.

It performs on par with

Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio.

It's so good to do the opposite of what he says that you might as well be insider trading.

I watched a YouTube video about that Kramer guy, and I feel like I remember hearing that someone like had a beef with him and specifically

made that software to like rub that Kramer's nose in it about how shitty of an animal that's very good.

Well, of course, of course he's terrible.

He's on TV telling retail investors where to invest.

The best thing for people who actually trade in any real volume is for all the retail investors to be terrible at it.

That's how they make money.

You got to juice it somewhere.

I just want to give you a quick update here.

It says here:

this is from a little while ago.

This is from February.

So these numbers are not

up to date.

But as of noon on February, the week of February 22nd,

a $100 bet on Stephen A.

Smith would win you $1,241 if Smith becomes the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 2028.

That's not enough.

That should be way, it should be way higher.

That's the wrong part of that.

That's a fake.

They're doing fake

fake Mac in the casino.

Yeah,

this is not Vegas shit.

This is fake.

Yeah, I mean,

it is fake.

Like, it's fake.

But it's also, this is a thing that Stephen A.

Smith has

started to talk about

more.

That's why I looked it up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't know that.

Stephen A.

Smith talking about how much he loves politics and wants to talk about politics and weigh in.

Yeah.

I understand.

He did a show with Bill O'Reilly, I think.

He did a show with some shitty Xbox.

He's gonna stick to what he's good at, which is being a soap opera star.

That's true.

Yeah, I've I've I've seen cumulatively in my life maybe 25 minutes of ESPN content.

Like I could not have less experience with it.

All 25 of those minutes are Stephen A.

Smith clips

that just are going around.

And I understand

that he's like a joke and that he sucks shit.

But everything I've ever seen of him is very funny.

Yeah, I mean, that's the problem: is that he does suck shit.

And, like, we know that.

And that's why we think Stephen A.

Smith is funny.

Stephen A.

Smith does not know he sucks shit.

And neither do a lot of.

The way he delivers it, though.

No, he's not.

He knows.

He,

I think of him as like a wrestling heel who's also an asshole.

Do you know what I mean?

That he's channeling his natural shittiness

into a bit.

He's dicing

like Andrew dice Clay.

Yeah.

My second favorite three named Andrew next to Andrew Lee Swan, who's much higher, but there's only

two couple.

There's only a

lot of.

Sorry, I had to send you this link because I think maybe you didn't know this about Stephen Day Smith.

Keith, Dre, you obviously do,

which is that Stephen Day Smith sometimes guests on General Hospital.

I have heard this before.

That's really funny.

Stephen D.

Smith, Foyle's assassination attempt, General Hospital, over on the awful announcing YouTube channel.

Oh, and he's like doing real plot shit.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

He's doing

assassination attempts.

You know what's really funny?

That's right.

And now that I know that he's on General Hospital, it's funny to me.

This is how my mom would know Stephen A.

Smith.

Because she's been watching General Hospital for 40 years or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's been on it apparently since 2016.

I think he is on it because he's a huge fan.

He's a huge fan.

He's a huge fan.

I think his mom was a huge fan.

My mom was a huge fan.

Oh, my God.

She was going to kill Sonny?

That's what I'm saying.

He saved Sonny?

He saved Sonny.

Oh, my God.

You got to call your mom.

He's shocking.

Tell me about when Stephen A.

Smith saved Sonny.

Sorry, his name is Brick.

His character name is Brick.

God, a fucking course it is.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I'm so glad that this is the only guy's name that I know on General Hospital

so that I could do that.

According to, I'm going to read you his

stat sheet from the General Hospital fan wiki here, portrayed by Stephen A.

Smith, recurring 2016 to present.

Strength, 16.

I'm going to jump ahead a little bit.

Ethnicity, African-American, gender, male, occupation, and there's a few things here.

Security consultant.

Sure.

Surveillance/slash tech expert for the Corinthos mob family.

Formerly worked as security for a quote three-letter agency.

Former spy and veteran.

He wrote this.

I don't think he wrote this.

He wrote this.

He wrote this.

He said, here's who I want to be.

That's right.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

That makes sense.

He has two romances.

I said, Carly Spencer, Crush and Flirtation, and Jordan Ashford, Flirtation, 2024 to present.

I can't believe Stephen A.

Smith has a gun on TV.

That's right.

Yeah.

With a silencer on it.

Yeah.

It's a suppressed pistol.

It is funny to me that they zoom in to like him pulling the trigger.

Yeah.

But like you can't see him.

So I almost wonder if he was like, I need a body double.

I can't do this.

The gun out, though, is so funny.

Like, he doesn't even care.

It's so funny.

I mean, isn't this the great tragedy of our times?

There are a bunch of people who would be incredible if all they did was be funny on film, but they all decided to try to throw their hat in the rings for leading the world.

Yeah.

Nightmare.

Terrible situation.

You say, get Chuck Schumer on General Hospital.

I would love for Steve Naismith to shoot Chuck Schumer

on General Hospital.

Or whatever.

In Minecraft.

Or whatever.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Could you imagine what the news would be like?

There's that great episode of Idle Thumbs from Forever Ago about

Max Payne and how there's an episode where, in an episode, there's a part of Max Payne 3 where Max complains that the news

is covering him

and his

vengeance-filled murder spree through Rio.

And

I don't remember if it's Sean or Chris or Jake, but somebody's like, that would be the only thing the noose talked about all year.

If Stephen A.

Smith killed Chuck Schumann, it would be the only thing any of us talked about for at least two years.

That's all I'm saying.

We should take a break on that.

No, any of the final thoughts on

whatever we're here talking about, Night Rain, Night Rain.

I think it's really fun.

I love that I don't have to fucking, I can just run past everything.

It's like starting Elden Elden Ring at a level that I never got to in Elden Ring or any other Souls games where it's just like these guys are nothing to me.

I don't even have to, I don't have to worry.

If they hit me two times, I'm fine.

I'm not going to die.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I and the boss fights is always the, that's the, where the juice has been in those games for me anyway.

So it's great to just have a run to the boss game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The game is is really good.

I definitely want to I want to play it a lot more.

My last time playing it is not from my thoughts on the game.

That game is great.

I'm really impressed as someone who was really cold on this game before it came out and did not expect to like it at all.

I'm really happy with that game.

Yeah, yeah.

We streamed a bunch of it.

We streamed like four hours of it or something like that a couple weeks ago.

So that's up on the Twitch, twitch.tv/slash friends of the table.

It'll eventually go up on the YouTube.

Yeah, it'll be up probably next week.

Slash at Friends of the Table, I think.

We'll take a break.

We'll come back.

We'll talk about farming again.

Great.

We're back.

And I want to talk to you about the most annoying dragon who's ever been born.

Damn, man.

Is that not true?

Is that not true?

Grey, you've played a lot of this now.

I think the more you play,

the...

It's still not good, but it's...

So we're talking about Wolby, right?

We're talking about Woolby, the.

We're talking about Wolby.

We're talking about Woolby.

Not the game.

Not the game.

We're talking about Woolby.

In this case, truly, because I used to like Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma, the most recent Rune Factory game, quite a bit.

I even like Woolby just fine, but,

you know,

I can't think of a more annoying dragon off the top of my head.

Yeah, it's...

You just, the more chances you see of him, you get some of the good stuff to balance out the annoying stuff.

I feel like he is especially annoying at the beginning, though.

The dragon from Rune Factory 4, which is the Rune Factory that I've played a lot of, isn't not annoying.

Let me look this guy up.

Ventus Williams Will.

Ventus Will.

Oh, Ventus Will.

Okay, yeah, I forgot about that.

I did play Rune Factory 4.

I like her.

It's very, it is funny to have kind of a spacey dragon

who like keeps getting things wrong.

Yeah.

But it's like likable, but pretty annoying.

Different vibe here, I'll say.

Okay.

Yeah.

What is Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma, Dre?

Yeah,

yeah.

So it is, I mean, it is a...

Gosh, what do we call these now?

What are we calling them?

Farming, cozy farming game kind of

game.

What are we calling these?

Farm Pact.

Farm PG.

Yeah, that's fair.

Especially this style of them, right?

Yeah, for sure.

So yeah, Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma is from the long-running Rune Factory series, which is, I can never remember, is it that Rune Factory is made by the people who originally made Harvest?

Yes.

That is correct, I believe.

I believe that it is literally, it was originally a spin-off of Harvest Moon, which is now Story of Seasons.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's now its own, it's not like, it's not harvest.

The first one was Rune Factory, a fantasy Harvest Moon, and it is now just Rune Factory.

Yeah.

I think the only one of these that I've played extensively is four.

Same.

So I don't know how much of this is in all the Rune Factories, but I know in Four and in this game, you play a character who's called an Earthmate, which is basically a person that has magical powers that allow you to commune with nature and the gods

in

special anime ways.

Yeah, I would say there's the particular.

So I played the first

three.

I played, maybe I played one, two, and four.

I bounced off of five for sure.

I would say that they don't all have the particular

mythology, like terminology of Earthmate and similar stuff.

Before you are an Earthmate.

Okay.

They do certainly all have the kind of broader thing, which is like...

These are games like Harvest Moon where you're doing some farming, but then magic happens either via goddesses or dragons, or there are different magical areas that have different seasons, like permanently imposed on them.

Um, you know, for instance, uh, I want to say in Rune Factory one, there were caves that had, like, oh, this cave is permanently spring zone, you know, uh, or whatever.

Um, whereas this one is like there are different towns, all of which are permanently locked in one of the seasons.

Um, yeah, but but that that gist of it of like, oh, it's a Harvest Moon style game or a Stardew Valley style game, except filled with RPG

style characters and plot lines and shit has always been there.

Yeah.

And they, all the Rune Factor games have also all, have they all had combat in them?

Yes.

That has been exactly right.

Yeah.

That was like the

thing that in the first one really separated it from Harvest Moon was like, oh, this is one where you get a sword.

And so you're fighting monsters or you're, you know, recruiting monsters or, or whatever, throughout the various, the various editions.

In fact, I think in three, you might be a monster who has like,

but you are, in fact, a woolly who like gets reformed into a person or something like that.

I can't quite remember the specifics, but it is something like that.

And that is like a major theme of the Rune Factory games is that like all of your potential, or not all, but a chunk of your your potential love interest, which of course is a big part of the game, are the monster bosses from the different areas that you have to turn back into humans?

That is, that is, I think,

as of right now, as I'm playing this, I think that is one of the things that I think is different about this one, but it is historically true in past runes.

Has been true in past runes.

Am I wrong that they're not?

Maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I, because I fought a bunch of bosses.

I haven't dated one of them yet.

Well,

and none of them turned back into humans after you beat them.

So

you kill me.

Well, no, because

I'm doing the autism thing where I'm like, what's the true, what's the right answer here?

Let me think about this in way too much granular detail.

All I know is I fought a big evil tree.

I fought like a weird spirit knight or some shit at one point.

And

those bosses, at least, seem like they're just bosses.

The bosses do not turn back into the gods, but after you beat the boss, they're like the thing that they were trapped in turns into a person.

That is true.

You're right.

That is how you, yeah.

So there's, there are four, I guess

off the jump, Rune Factory Guardians of Azuma is explicitly a very kind of like Eastern mythology film, you know,

kind of setting in comparison or in contrast to previous Rune Factory games.

Very Japanese in its aesthetic,

but also lots of, you know, touches of kind of Chinese mythology.

The dragons of the seasons, uh, there, there are, you know, spirits and everything, all of that stuff.

And then just like visually, it is Japanese fantasy, you know, uh, samurai-ass traveling person comes to town, you know, uh, and and tries to help villagers who are farming uh in the little Japanese village, you know, like that is that is the aesthetic set for this, which is has not been the case with previous rune factories for sure.

Yeah.

Do you want to talk about the the other aesthetic that is so essential to this game?

Anime?

Genshin Impact.

Oh, it's interesting that you say that.

I had very similar.

I have Genshin Impact feeling more than I have Genshin Impact aesthetic.

But I think that's just because I think so poorly of the contemporary.

This is going to sound like a wild thing to say.

The contemporary Genshin Impact aesthetic.

No, yeah.

Where are we in Genshin Impact now?

Years ago.

I haven't played since the Green plays.

You haven't played since Fantasy India?

Yeah, correct.

I haven't played since France.

They did Fantasy France.

Right.

Right.

And now

they've done Fantasy Mesoamerica slash...

I don't know.

There's still no brown people in this fucking game, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I hear they've done a really good job of doing cultures of black and brown people without actually having any black or brown people.

You know what?

You're right.

I shouldn't have even just said Mesoamerica, right?

Because it's like the one that it's at now

is like a weird amalgam of, in the same way that Sumeru was both India and a little Egypt.

I think this current one is both South Central America and also

like Africa in places.

It's called Natlin, N-A-T-L-A-N.

My actual beef with contemporary Genshin character design is that it all looks like V-tubers.

They all look like it.

Everything's flowy.

Everything's just like a thousand ribbons.

I think it's too busy.

I think

I kind of feel the same way about some of the character design in this game.

Say more.

Well, just specifically, maybe even less Genshin, but more Vtuber.

Like, some of the...

I think especially some of the characters you meet early on give me huge Vtuber like design energy.

Like Hina

and the first two gods you meet, Ulalaka?

Yeah, Ulalaka and Matsuri.

They both.

And kind of in personality, Matsuri very much feels like a VTuber.

Absolutely.

Yeah, 100% Matsuri does.

Yeah.

The thing that they remind me of, or a lot of these character designs remind me of, is

what do you call it?

Demon Slayer.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Especially the women in this game

have huge Demon Slayer vibes to me, which is.

Malaka looks literally like a character.

I'm looking at the character last year.

Literally one of the characters from Demon Slayer for sure.

100%.

And these are, we're being very broad in our, and there are lots of people I know who are listening who are like, don't follow any of this stuff.

So I will say, you know, try to be a little bit more descriptive.

This is a character design style that I think is defined by a few things.

And I'm not an artist.

So like, please stick with me as I try to like muddle through this.

One,

very busy visual design.

You take a simple silhouette and then you cover it up by bolting on a bunch of things.

That can be things like in the case of someone like Hina,

you know, fluffy ears, a big hat, horns,

you know, hair that is

kind of two or three different types of haircut in one, big flowy hair, but also big kind of like a column of hair that kind of like goes down like this.

No, I don't have a camera on, but you know, it goes down like this and it has little like tie ribbon ties around the edges of it.

And then the costuming has like a a bunch of extra details.

Tassel's double skirt, like it's a skirt and like half a skirt on top of it.

You know, three, four belted like bags on top of the front.

Yes, yes.

And that's also the same for the dudes like Moro, who is Hina's kind of like buddy, whether kind of tied to the same sort of exploration

archaeology group, quote unquote, also has like layer after layer, lots of flair, but also goggles and a hat on top top of that, you know, the goggles on top of the hat and a big brooch and like all sorts of just like, it's just a lot.

And then the other half of it is, I think, very

a use of color that is like

big, singular, bright colored eyes that punch through the design in order to try to have like a sense of focus

that tries to like bring together the busyness around like big green eyes or, you know, really, you know, sparkling

silver eyes that bring the whole thing together.

I think there are some characters here who are less in this design aesthetic, but there's a fucking lot of it for sure, especially out the game.

I think that some of them do hit that more

the early Genshin anime style that is like, oh, this is what if there was a maid?

This is what if there was a samurai with a big armor, armor pauldron.

And that's kind of his whole thing, you know?

But I'm with you that there is a thing.

It's funny if you, if you scroll, I'm on the Wikipedia for this, the Rune Factory wiki, and there's like the Bachelorettes, The Bachelors, and then other characters.

Other characters are so much more tame and much less.

I would call this design aesthetic kind of annoying to me.

As always, I'm such a, I wish you could date the characters you cannot date in this game.

Brother.

It's brutal.

They made it better and

still awful.

Who is it that you're wanting to date?

How long have you got, buddy?

How many names you want?

Give them all.

Yeah, guess three.

Three each.

Do you want three?

Okay.

Takumi, the himbo carpenter.

Great.

Love that.

100%.

I'm with you.

Tsubame.

Tsubame,

the lady from the second village, the summer village,

who is like the merchant.

She's great.

Cool design.

Yeah.

Great design.

You probably haven't made it to the...

You haven't made it to the winter village.

I've only made it to the third village.

The third village is the autumn village.

Yeah.

Yachio from that village, also great.

Oh, yeah.

Wow, that's a great design.

Yeah, what's wrong with Yachi?

Okay, Yachio is like a cat girl.

I don't know what her role is, but I'm looking at this character.

She runs a restaurant.

Okay, I was going to say an inn, but okay, a restaurant.

That makes perfect sense.

But very simple design, elegant.

the one piece of like unique breakthrough visual design she's got two tails that's cool simple yeah yep yeah and then just like a normal robe like someone might might wear

yeah totally uh that last one is zaza that you haven't met yet zaza zaza is a great name shout out to zaza she's a she's a dwarf who runs a blacksmith Corey is a blacksmith, I should say.

Yeah, she's really cool.

I think, interestingly, the game design is where I felt that there was some of that sort of like third-person uh action adventure exploration stuff that Genshin was,

you know, so became so popular with.

Uh, it's not as open as Genshin, or obviously, like Breath of the Wild, which Genshin took so much influence from.

Um, but in contrast to the Rune Factories that I've played, which are kind of traditionally isometric in the way that something like Harvest Moon or Stardew, you know, are, um, or top-down.

Uh, it's a third-person game.

There's different um weapon types that have different weapon animations.

So, like, you have your big greatswords, you have your kind of traditional katana, you have a bow, you have magical talismans that you can kind of fling around.

Um, you have enemies with elemental weaknesses, you have allies uh who you can raise your,

you know, kind of like uh uh affinity rank with, who will support you.

And they have different roles, like tank and healer.

You have boss fights that sometimes require you to like shoot a special spot or use a special type of attack to create openings where they're vulnerable.

You know, you kind of like stack a stun meter on them.

And all of that stuff is like,

I think that that stuff is passable at best, but is like...

Yeah.

Pretty good if what you're looking at in contrast is other farming games with RPG action in them, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would much rather play this than I would play the fighting in

Stardew or something like that.

It's clearly just a more central, you know, part of what the game is.

And I find myself pretty interested in like going down the skill tree and thinking about what weapons I want to upgrade and all of that.

Where it works for me, and Dre, I'm curious if it's working for you, is in the farming is like the wrong word because it's so much more than farming.

village management.

Yeah, it's village management.

You get villages in this game.

Yeah, so you get, as far as I know, plural.

At this point, I have four villages.

I have one for every season.

And yeah, a big part of the villages is farming, not only just because of like...

Farming, because like that's a core tenant of the gameplay loop here, but they also work it into as the village chief, you have to be aware of the finances of all the villages.

And like all the finances of all the villages like pool back into your account, basically.

So like if you don't want to be losing money every day, you have to have people farming and running other businesses and stuff in the villages so that you can like make a net profit.

Yeah, you are.

You don't have to farm at all.

Actually, you just let the villagers do it just the whole time.

You totally can.

Yeah.

You could let, you have to lay out the farm spaces.

You have to build where the farms are.

You have to make sure that they have seeds available to plant.

But you're instead of doing the, and you can go through, and there's even some value in going through yourself.

You know, if you have a, you could use the fire sword relic to like collect extra seeds, for instance, in a way that they can't use the drum to make things grow faster.

That's right.

Yeah.

But the, but so much of what you're doing is more like, I'm laying out a really pretty looking farm that has the right set of decor in it to give a certain certain type of bonus, to give the like, um, you know, uh, rural, you know, rustic beauty, you know, bonus or whatever the fuck that helps produce productivity.

Or I'm making sure that my, the workers who have

the blacksmithing or like the, the doesn't get tired skill or whatever, you know, are in the appropriate place in the village.

I'm making sure all of my shops have someone working there.

But you're, it's a little more hands-off in a way that's kind of interesting and does feel novel for for the

Maybe not the entire genre, but certainly for Rune Factory.

It's interesting because it's it is more hands-off, but it also the deeper you get into it the more fiddly it can become because you get like a big series of lists of basically like hey do you want to increase your village level?

Do all this stuff.

It's like 50 things

like 100 things.

I was gonna say 50.

Yeah, it's a huge list.

It's a huge list and you know it updates as you level up.

So it's like, you know, when you're level one, the goal is like purify 50% of the land.

And then you get to level two.

And it's like, all right, well, now do 60%, then 70% and blah, blah, blah, blah.

But yeah, it's, it's some of that stuff is like, hey, place 30 decorations.

Hey, make sure your decorations are boosting your strength by X amount.

Yeah.

So sometimes also I clear a space and then I'm like, well, this is where I put 20 of these stone pillars so that I can get plus 20 HP, baby.

It's my stone pillar forest.

It's very avant-garde.

And then I get, and then I, you know, I get to the end of the day and Wooly, this little like sheep dragon mascot character, is like, you know, you don't have enough houses.

Your people aren't happy because you fucking built about 30 stone pillars instead of a house.

And I'm like, ah, shit.

Right.

I'll get to it tomorrow, Wooly.

Don't worry.

And I will not get to it tomorrow.

I will forget.

I will go build a cafe instead.

Where do they get off calling this guy a dragon?

He turns into a big dragon.

He turns into a big dragon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess, you know, a little setup here that we didn't really go over.

It's just like, you are, you are an earth, an earthmate.

You have nature magic.

You, you are an agent of slash

someone in communication with the gods.

The gods speak to you in your dreams, and the game opens with a sort of conflict between you and the other player character.

So if you pick the dude, you're fighting the lady.

If you pick the lady, presumably you're fighting the dude and you land,

the fight goes bad.

You land

in a semi-amnesiac state.

I think fully amnesiac to start, but you know, they get the ball rolling.

They get the ball rolling and it all comes back.

Yeah, it's quick before you're like, oh, yeah, that's my dragon.

I'm flying my dragon around in pseudo,

you know, I wouldn't say it's this, I wouldn't go so far as what was the Zelda with the sky stuff?

Not the most

skyward sword.

Not quite skyward sword exploration, but like, you know, there's little sky islands that you can fly your dragon around to, basically.

And yeah, you're like trying to revive these four villages, which have been kind of beset by a decay over the last.

question mark, question mark, question mark time.

The villages, you know, used to be...

The example I go to a lot when I think about this is like one of the villages used to have hot springs because it had an active volcano nearby.

And so the kind of geothermals were running, and now it doesn't.

And the volcano has become dormant.

And what it really needs is that volcano to be active again.

Yep.

Yep.

So you got to go make sure that's that's happening, you know, normal stuff like that.

Um, and I don't know, like, Dre, you've played previous Rune Factory, you've played at least one previous Rune Factory.

Is this hitting for you?

Are you feeling?

And I know that you had strong feelings about fantasy life farming, so I'm curious if we're coming from that.

Has you feeling a certain way here?

Um,

i am liking this game a lot but i do i wonder how the legs are gonna be on it um because i i i i don't know how far i'll i'll care about going with like the village stuff and things like that like i am not a person who is driven to like max out everything about a game if i don't enjoy playing it or doing it and so i'm sure at some point like i'll hit a wall here in the post-game the way i did with fantasy life as well right um but so far i'm like 15 hours in.

I have story-wise, I've like done the first four villages.

I definitely don't feel like I'm anywhere close to like the end game.

It feels like I've gotten to the point where it's like, okay, we have, we're done giving you like a new tutorial on every new island you go to now.

Now you can like just play the game.

Play the game, yeah.

You know, I'm very curious because I, I,

these games, maybe more than

uh Harvest Moon or

Stardew for me, are

those games are about the characters.

I don't want to say they're not about the characters.

Sure.

But there is something about Rune Factory.

And I think maybe this one, especially because you're just always with these characters,

you bring three characters with you when you go out to fight and stuff.

It really lives and dies on do I want to see more of the character story stuff.

I think especially with this one where they've shifted.

I'm not going around my field every morning and watering my carrots, you know?

And so instead, a big part of what you do is you go and talk to a character.

And in this version, when you go talk to a character, it pops up a set of four options for you to like, what do you want to do with them?

Do you want to like go hang out with them at the tea house?

Do you want to go to the waterfall?

Do you want to talk about like combat techniques?

Do you want to, you know, show them.

Do you want to take a nap?

You want to take a nap with them?

You want to go hang out and take a nap with them?

Do you have a high enough, you know, relationship with them to take a nap?

Have you asked someone to do something and them turn you down?

Oh, yes, I have.

Oh, so it's so brutal.

It's so brutal, dude.

What do they fucking like yell at you?

What do they do?

Well, so the way it works is that some activities are like a certain rank level.

And if your bond isn't high enough, rank level, the activity is, you run the risk of them like turning you down.

So like the first time I went to go hang out with Yachio, the cat lady who runs the restaurant, I didn't, I wasn't even thinking about it.

And one of the options was like, oh, do you want to go get dinner?

And that's a level three thing.

And I was like, oh, yeah, it's fine.

Everyone that that I've ever asked to like go get food at the tea place has been like, yeah, let's do it.

That sounds awesome.

Because you're already tight with them.

You just met this lady.

Well, okay.

And, but, yeah.

And you know what she told me?

She said, um, please respect my boundary.

Damn.

Come on.

It's just dinner.

No, listen.

Not even.

I'm just saying, let's go to the tea shop.

Let's hang out.

Listen, she said no.

You're not even a romance character.

She did say that.

She didn't say that to have boundaries.

She didn't say no.

She said, please respect my boundaries.

Like, I didn't know your boundaries.

I didn't know food was your boundary.

It's cool.

We're bond rank three now.

We've now got to dinner.

Thanks, Joe.

When I asked the, what's,

is it Aroha, the tea house lady?

When I asked her to take a nap and she said yes, what she said was, you must be a mind reader.

How else could you know that I wanted to do this?

And she looked very embarrassed.

So, you know, you just gotta, you gotta build your rapport with people.

You gotta see those numbers go up.

And then once they go up enough, you can go take naps with people.

Can you take naps with people that aren't the romanceable characters?

No, this is a romance.

But the tear, the Rohan.

The cat lady.

But also, yes, you can.

Okay, can you take it?

Okay, yeah.

Well, listen, sometimes you just take it.

I took a nap with the homie Sakaki.

This is what I'm saying.

That's like an hour ago, I'm pretty sure.

Kiss your homies good night and then take a nap.

Yeah.

This is

brand new development.

Oh, no, I'm sorry.

It was with Takumi, not with Sakaki.

Okay, okay, okay.

Even better because it was with Takumi.

Takumi's great.

Wait, am I thinking the right person?

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Squirrel, wait, wait.

Okay, okay, okay.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes, yes.

Takumi's great.

Takumi is the homie.

Takumi is like a big buff guy who builds all the buildings for you and has a heart of gold.

And it's like, why is he not a datable guy?

Why is Mauro a dateable guy?

I know why Morrow's a datable guy.

It's the same thing as

Mysteria.

It is.

Mysteria.

I forget what that guy's name is, but the guy that everybody loves.

be the nice brother.

You can date.

You can date the shitty brother, but not the nice brother.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to date the shitty brother.

I'm profitable.

But they already did half the brothers.

Why not just check off both brothers?

That's right.

Check them off.

God, I just looked at the full art of Hina again.

I had forgotten that she also has a huge, like, foxtail.

Busiest character design I've ever seen in my life.

Now, all that way.

We said all that about the character designs.

I do love this goofy fisherman,

Waterase,

with his stupid hat and his big mask and his dinosaur tooth necklace.

Hey,

what do you think his voice sounds like?

Like, if you had to guess like an archetypical character voice, what do you think?

Sensitive, soft.

That's where I was going, too.

I was going,

the fish aren't biting today.

The fish aren't out there today.

I sure hope the fish come today.

No, man.

Is he...

Wait, is he Southern?

Does he sound like

a fish ain't biting today?

Yes, 100%.

That rules.

It's so good.

Let me date this guy.

Why can't I date this guy?

Take his mask off.

Everybody has a real kissable lip.

Another mask underneath the mask.

Oh, that's right.

So the fish can't see.

Yeah, I'm curious about its staying power 2.

I, you know, this has been a year filled with games like this already, especially coming so quick after Rune Factory coming so quick after Fantasy Life, which I like played the shit out of.

And then I even kept playing it after we podcasted about it, which is very rare for me.

Except that I didn't go back.

I stopped to play Rune Factory in between.

And then like, I went back to Fantasy Life.

And now I'm like, I don't...

Did it not?

I thought it had its hooks in me deep.

I thought Rune Factory had me, and I got distracted.

And so I'm not sure.

I like, I...

Well, you did play like 50 hours of Fantasy Life or more, right?

It's not...

I played 90 hours of fantasy life.

That's not how much I had these hooks into you.

No, no, no, no.

I'm saying I thought Rune Factory had gotten its hooks into me.

Oh,

and in fact, I had not escaped the hooks of Fantasy Life.

Even though I actually think I like Rune Factory moment to moment, not moment moment to moment i like fantasy life moment to moment more in a way that i don't like you know we were talking earlier about like do you enjoy it or do you just do it are you compelled to do it yeah fantasy life is like a compulsion engine for me like it is

100

Whereas I like Rune Factory and I want to play more Rune Factory, but I'm finding it easier to put down.

Maybe part of the

compulsion in the 21st century.

Isn't that exactly what 2025 is like?

I have all these things I like, but instead I'm doing these things that I'm compelled to do that I actually don't really like.

I have 15 TV series I could be watching right now.

I'm scrolling, motherfucker.

This is why

I feel forced to take the ungenerous view on Fortnite.

My view isn't ungenerous.

It's just...

No, no, no, but your view is generous.

My view is ungenerous.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I actually don't think my view is generous.

I don't think I'm being kind to people.

I think that I can say that they are not...

To me, hypocrite is not the worst thing you can be.

No, you will refraining from judgment, replacing judgment with curiosity.

That is curious.

That is the way I'm able to.

I'm happy to be curious and to judge.

If I let the mask fall,

it would be done for me and the world.

Do you know what I mean?

Uh-huh.

I used to be that guy, and I can't be that guy anymore.

Sure.

I'm trying to think.

I'm glad I'm trying to think back.

I'm happy to follow you on this journey from a distance.

I'm happy to to watch you with my binoculars as you become the judgmental gamer.

Your new YouTube channel.

Yeah, that's it.

I can't wait for your cool theme song.

Oh, my God.

How's that go, Keith?

How's your judgmental gamer theme song?

Judgmental Gamer, he will judge the things you do.

Judgmental Gamer, he will hate the things you do.

That's, you know, okay.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, pretty.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

You got to keep the beat with just a gavel that that you're banging on something in the background.

The judge, right?

Like a judge.

Oh, hey,

judge gamer.

Yeah, when I, at the very end of the theme song, it goes, overruled.

You would fucking kill in 2006.

You would be.

You would be in the middle of the morning.

What do I have in common with those people?

This is a whole new strain.

This is a star.

I'm judgmental against them.

That's the thing.

This is versus.

I'm judgmental versus them.

That's the name of your series where you

take emails and yell at people.

It's called versus mode or something, right?

Yeah.

I do have a quick judgmental gamer thing, which is someone wrote in, Nelson from Seattle wrote in and said, hi, side dishes, which is a hell of a way thing to call us, side dishes.

I've heard Austin bring up his preference for the original No Man's Sky over the current iteration, but I've never heard why.

Can we hear the full rundown or lowdown?

Is it because you could now befriend animals?

Does Austin hate animals?

Please respond to these animal hating allegations.

Thanks again for the show, Nelson from Seattle.

I don't hate animals.

In fact, I think you could feed them back then.

You just couldn't recruit them during Launch No Man.

You couldn't have them as pets in the same way.

It's actually the same conversation we just had about Rune Factory character design.

Launch No Man's Sky is less like

Hina and Matsuri and more like

Takumi and Tsubame and Yachio.

There is a simplicity and straightforwardness to its design.

I am not saying it was not without problems, but when you took it on face value as what it was,

I mean, a thing that drove me crazy at the time was people saying they didn't know what that game was going to be.

Yeah.

When I like very clearly sketched out what it would be on an episode of The Beastcast like six months before it came out or something, and it was that thing.

Now, do I also think that part of their marketing strategy was about leaving very clear blank spaces if you didn't like go to their website and read their write-up of what the game was?

Absolutely.

But I did that because I was curious about the game.

And on that page, they said what the game was.

So I knew what I was getting into when I played it.

I knew that it wasn't going to be everything for everyone.

I knew that it wasn't going to be a game game with like a deep story or interfactional politics or anything like that.

So I knew what it was going to be.

And the vibes of not just launch No Man's Sky.

This is where I'm like a real asshole.

My favorite version of No Man's Sky

was the pre 1.0 patch version

that I was able to play because I got a copy before street date.

Because I got an early copy from the street.

Not a copy they sent me.

I went to a location in New York and got a copy.

And that version, which was even rougher, even less focused on funneling the player through the sort of,

even at that point, very slim narrative,

you know, funnel.

I had a much, I had, that's the best time I had with that game, which was like fully focused on the pleasure of exploring new places, the pleasure of looking at different aesthetic combinations of what its procedural system could put together,

you know, finding a new ship, all that.

And those parts of the upgraded, the current version of the game, I still like quite a bit.

It's the stuff that's like, I don't want to be on a big space station with 30 other people in No Man's Sky.

The original No Man's Sky is

the.

It's the opposite of Pokemon Snap, where they put you in a cart and they drag you down.

They put you in a cart, they drag you on the rails, and they put all of the interesting stuff in the world in front of you to take a picture of.

No Man's Sky's original thing was

you can go anywhere and do anything and the interesting stuff is spread around

and you've just got to go find it and look at it and then when you get there you've looked at it yeah and then you like record 30 seconds of it and you put a song from you put a frank ocean song behind it and you put it on twitter and you go damn the vibes are fucking good tonight and that's it That's all the game needed to be to me.

And it was that.

And now it's like, I like base building.

We were just talking about the village building and rune factory but i don't like it as much as i liked finding a planet with like purple green grass as the sunset uh that and like the ruins in the distance or whatever like that to me was the version of the game that most that like made me just want to like be in it the most and the reality of base building is never as good as the promise of dreams building

Yeah, no, that's very true.

Yeah, I just don't think my brain is

no man's sky base building is also

not good.

Like, it's not a good system.

No.

You got to learn a lot of weird glitches and stuff to do good stuff.

They did such a great job of convincing everybody that No Man's Sky is now what they promised it would be.

Like people are so high on that game and the way that it has changed.

I'm not saying I dislike any of it.

Yeah.

And I'm excited for their new thing.

I really am excited for them to take a fresh, you know, swing at something.

It's sort of like medieval fantasy.

It's like a fantasy thing.

Yeah, light, no fire.

I'm very curious.

I'm also very, I'm very, I like that they keep

putting the tech that they're building for that game back into No Man's Sky where they're like, yeah, yeah, we made the water better because we made good water for light, no fire.

What are we going to do?

Not put it in No Man's Sky.

Which is the answer to that historically for game studios is yes.

You would never, why would you do that?

But they're doing it.

So you can ride a dragon.

Okay, I'm in.

Yeah.

You're in.

Oh, you're watching the trailer for Light No Fire.

Is that what you're doing?

I have not seen this.

I have not heard of this.

There's like weird bird people and shit, you know?

And I hope that they take as long as they need for it.

And I hope they don't feel like it has to be everything to everyone.

I think the more that they lean into that sort of messaging, the more likely they are going to be to disappoint people again, which again is on them to some degree.

And on whoever was doing the publishing and I mean, Sony was doing the publishing for the first one, but the marketing stuff.

But yeah, I don't know.

We'll see.

We'll see.

But yeah, that's right.

I like the simplicity of it.

I like the focus on exploration and

the lack of overwhelming options.

I think that it was a cleaner, smoother game.

Every once in a while, there's like a wild flashpoint in games and people's reaction to games.

Like Mass Effect 3 coming out was one.

No Man's Sky coming out was one.

It is very weird how that stuff shakes out every time

in retrospect.

It always feels like it was the wrong way to go to freak the fuck out over something like that.

Yeah,

it does.

It sure does.

Yeah.

You know, take it a day at a time.

Be confident in your vision.

You know, you can write a kingfisher.

You can write a kingfisher in light and fire.

That's fucking sick.

See, I got your ass.

But

I'm not it's going to be in there.

I saw it.

You did see it.

You did.

And I'm not saying that all those trailers had stuff that was in it.

There were definitely some creatures in those early No Man Sky trailers that did not make it in.

I'm not saying that that's not the case.

I just also don't trust any trailer I see ever.

So, you know.

Anyway,

that's my defense.

Thanks for your email, Major Nelson.

I don't think it was Major Nelson.

I think it's a different one.

Though

it does say from Seattle,

is he still doing?

Is he still the guy who's not?

I don't think he is.

I don't think he's still doing Xbox stuff.

What's he doing now?

I don't know.

Let's find out.

What was his name?

Larry?

Larry Herb?

Herb.

He works for Unity.

He's Unity's Unity's Community Department.

That's a rough.

That's a rough.

So you got

a cool Unity podcast?

Probably.

Are you going to tell me what Xbox Live arcade games are coming out on Unity?

I don't think he's going to do it.

No, I don't think he's doing it.

I cannot imagine, honestly, a worse job than being the

community department for Unity since 2024.

Oh, yeah.

I wouldn't want to do this one either.

I was being hyperbolic.

Yeah, but yes.

You were.

You were.

You were.

Anyway,

I think that's going to do it for us.

Any final thoughts from folks on anything we talked about today?

I'm always looking for the.

All I want is a perfect farming game for me, and it doesn't exist.

And I'm still waiting for it.

Maybe

rune factory azuma is that what it's called guardians of azuma

i guess i'll also say right now as of this recording and i think by the time this episode comes out yeah harvestella is 60 off on steam and i think harvestella is really good i think it leans even more towards rpg than farming but it is more hands-on farming than guardians of azuma is um i think that game is underrated frankly it has some wild turns in it and uh i think that the combat and class design is really cool and i think the character design is like really restrained and like simple in a really minimalist way.

In Harvestella.

In a really, really strong way.

In Harvestella.

Yeah.

Shoutouts to Harvestella.

Yeah.

I really like Drune Factory 4.

I think I will try Guardians of Azuma.

But

I don't know.

One day there will be something that takes farming and fishing very seriously and has good combat and has a bunch of characters that I like.

One day.

How many hours in fantasy life do you have?

Uh, 30, 35.

Yeah, it's so close to that, and yet I just don't think it's there.

I just don't.

I felt, I liked the last podcast we did, and me too.

I love the last podcast being like, we just me and Keith just shit talked that game for 30 minutes, but I really have 90 hours in that game.

I really like that game.

I want to play more of it.

And also, there's just some things that just didn't hit for me.

And

I don't think we should disappoint that bad.

I hope not.

I don't think, I don't think it came across that way.

I didn't feel, feel, I always feel like I should say, I'm about to shit talk this thing about this game.

That doesn't mean that I don't like the game.

Yeah.

It is an expression of what I do like about the game, how much I want this thing to be different.

Yeah.

I agree.

All right.

As always, you can support everything we do here.

Friends of the table.cash.

You can go watch our streams at youtube.com slash friends at the table or twitch.tv slash friends at the table.

Please go listen to media club plus which is nearing the end of its hunter hunter run uh very excited for what comes next there so stay tuned about that uh and go listen to if you if you want to hear us uh you know play some some tabletop games inspired by jrpgs you can go listen to our main season of friends at the table right now uh called perpetua where we're playing fabula ultima a game that takes a lot of inspiration from jrpgs uh as always you can please leave us some reviews on whatever your pod catcher of choice is.

I don't have any reviews up right this second, but I'll try to get some for the next time.

I read a really funny one last time, so I'm on the lookout.

I'm on the lookout for funny ones.

Please go review the podcast and let people know.

I think, you know, Dre, at the beginning of the episode, you made a joke thinking that the episode, or you made a statement thinking that the show was Patreon only.

I don't think you're the only one who thinks that.

I think that there, I've seen people on social media saying, oh, wait, I thought this was a Patreon thing.

It is not.

If you're listening to this, you should know that it's not.

Please tell people about it.

It's still a pretty new podcast, and it is a very busy, competitive space.

So please let people know that we're talking about video games over here these days.

And we'd love to have more listeners.

So thank you so much for listening.

Dre, where can people find you since it's the first time here on the show?

Yeah, you can find me on Blue Sky.

I'm on over there at swantre3000.bluesky.social.

There it is.

All right.

Until next time,

to be continued.