04: Get Ready to Learn Heaven, Buddy

What's good, internet?

It is May 13th, 2025, and this is not a doomed expedition into the depths of a surreal fantasy continent.

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

I am joined today by the returning Janine Hawkins and first-time co-host Sylvie Bullet.

Welcome, both of you.

Hello, happy to be here.

Always glad to have you.

Sylvie, for people who don't know you from anything else,

what's your deal?

Oh man, what's my deal?

People are asking me this all the time.

I guess just to go over the stuff that I probably is most out there on the internet these days, I'm currently one of the co-hosts of our another Friends of the Table related project, Media Club Plus.

True.

I don't mention Friends of the Table because it kind of goes without speaking, without saying that we're all talking about that.

I'm one of the co-hosts on Media Club Plus, which has been for, I want to say, a year and a half, maybe a little longer,

been going through the 2011 anime adaptation of Hunter Hunter.

If you want to listen to that, it's been so much fun.

Jack, who's been on Side Story before, is also one of the hosts of that.

And Austin, we've had you guest a couple times.

We've been there a few times, yeah.

And you're nearing the end of Hunter Hunter.

You're three.

Your Chimera Antarctic.

I think you're going to record the next episode soon, right?

The first final arc of the 2011 anime.

Yeah, we have three or four

left to record, I think, depending.

I need to double check at how Keith laid the

episodes out.

But if you want to check that out, it's alternating weeks with Side Story, so there's really no excuse.

You're looking for a podcast

on a Tuesday where Side Story is not coming out.

There you go.

Check out Media Club.

I just want to use this opportunity to shout out the other podcast I do, which is more civilized age, because I know there are people who like video games who listen to this podcast.

And over on AMCA, we are going to cover KOTOR 2 starting last week.

We started last week.

We're going to start doing more next week.

So you should, if you're interested in coverage of that, even though you're not like a Star Wars person necessarily, you should go listen to that.

It's good.

It's me.

You're not a Star Wars person, but you're a Creia person.

But you're a Kreya person.

If you're a Creia person, that's Sylvie, I think.

Yeah.

Exactly.

You can go listen to us over there.

But today, as maybe I gestured at, we were here to start our conversations by talking about

the French surreal

RPG turn-based.

It's not even a little bit French.

Sure, there's an outfit set called Baguette, but it's not.

There's mimes.

You fight a mime to get away basically immediately.

I

can't make a guillotine joke in the first like 10 minutes.

Let's calm down saying it's not French.

They do make a guillotine joke very early on.

For a split second, I thought you were being serious, like a tenth of a second.

That's how my humor works.

Yeah, well, and I was like, oh my god,

is this game just like a big, weird anti-French

like

how could they all have that slip past me?

But no, Sandfall Interactive is French, I guess.

I'm getting it.

There are moments where I'm like, is this anti-French?

But I mean, that's true of a lot of French content.

Sure.

I mean, in the same way that if we were making a turn-based JRPG-inspired RPG, it might be anti-American.

I guess neither of you.

You're both Canadian, so this is a little bit more.

I mean, it might be anti-American.

It still would be.

You're right.

Yes.

But if I were doing it, it might still be that.

Yeah, Claire Obscure Expedition 33, which if you listen to other video game podcasts, if you pay attention to the kind of scene in any big way, it's been like at the front of conversation for the last couple of weeks.

But we haven't had an episode to talk about it.

So I've been playing a little bit of it.

I think I'm in the middle of Act 1 or like early in Act 1.

Y'all are both early into Act Two.

I'll say up top.

We're probably not going to talk about big spoilers or anything like that.

So don't worry about that.

No one here has finished the game.

We're not going to spoil any big plot beats along the way.

We do want to talk about what it is and what it's doing that people are so excited about.

And I would say the two things that I know about it from the jump, and again, I've played a bit of it.

One,

you know

french i guess european surrealism is all over this game in terms of its visual design um along with kind of like early 20th century art deco france ass france uh visual language like you said berets and baguettes and a certain style of uh architecture and stuff like that And then mechanically, I think the first pitch that made me go, oh, wait, do I actually have to play this?

Was like, what if something had JRPG style, which is a very, very broad term, as we talked over on a gathering information episode, that I don't know if that's out yet, but a turn based in the classic JRPG style, except also with some of

Slay the Spire style character building and kind of blending really unique character exclusive mechanics, like charging up for like one character charges up

a meter until it's filled and then does like extra damage.

Another character has different stances they move between.

Another character builds and spends these kind of of resources called stains.

There's lots of paint and color terminology, so there's a bunch of that.

That's kind of what the vibe is.

Not even just paint and color, but like art stuff.

One of the first big words you're faced with is called is gommage.

Right.

Yeah.

Which they say in the French version and the English version, right?

They just say gommage.

They just say gommage.

There's a lot of stuff that's just French that just is in the...

I've been playing in the English version just because I know I think both of y'all are playing French.

No, I'm playing in English.

No, I was really.

I was tempted to play in French to be like, yeah, I'm playing the original voice action.

I'm playing in French,

and I tried to switch back to English, and the switch just didn't take for some reason because I was curious.

So I'm just playing in French.

I saw someone say offhandedly that it was written for English, but I don't know.

I don't know.

The lip sync is English.

Okay.

The lip sync on the character animations is all English and there isn't a French version.

So I can usually tell like when they're saying,

you know, it matches the subtitles, but it doesn't match the French.

I'm not convinced that this is one of those things where it's like, oh, you need to play it in French.

You know, it's not like, like, remember me, I think you need to play remember me in French if you play remember me at all, ever.

I did not play that in French.

Maybe I should have played that in French.

The writing is way less obnoxious in French.

They have like big-name voice actors in the English cast, too.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

What's his name?

Who played Daredevil in the Netflix Daredevil is Gustave's English voice actor.

Oh, like big-name actor-actors, not just like big-name voice actors in the scene.

There is an antagonist that you meet very early on who I believe is also played by Andy Serkis.

Oh, damn.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm going to double-check that, but that's what I'm going to consider an effort to switch over to the English language.

That is Charlie Cox, the daredevil of we were talking about, is Gustave.

And yeah, a lot of names here I recognize too.

The Shadow Heart Lady is

does a great job, honestly.

I'm really enjoying Mayell as a character.

If you've not heard, if you don't know anything about what this game is, I think it's probably worth setting up narratively, which is the

titular Expedition 33 is a group of people going to hunt down a seemingly magical, powerful, gigantic woman named the Paintress, who every year, when the year ticks over,

kills everybody who is.

I'm sorry, she gamages everybody.

She gammages everybody.

She unalives everybody.

I saw someone on YouTube today say

that someone was unsubscribed from life being killed.

That's really funny.

We're all just finding new euphemisms constantly.

Get ready to learn heaven, buddy.

God.

So every year, there's a big clock, and the clock is counting down every year from 100 to zero.

And whenever it crosses a line,

whenever it comes to a new year, anybody who's over the number on that clock, on that year clock, is dead.

Sorry, is gummaged, gets gummaged.

I don't feel so good, Mr.

Gustav.

Monsieur Star.

Exactly, yes.

Like, that's the effect that happens.

They turn into like bits of paint and I guess like red and white flowers or whatever, right?

Well, there's also a weird, gooey element to it.

Yeah, exactly.

And so, in order to stop that from happening, every year, anybody who is in there, anybody who's willing and is in their last year of life, or just apparently decides, fuck it, I'll go early, can go on one of these expeditions to go try to stop this from happening going forward.

And so, you go in a boat to a distant continent to try to track down an answer to how to stop this painter

character.

And

things don't go great for you right away.

As I said in the intro, doomed expedition.

You know, I think they're trying to evoke like a little D-Day action, but it's a little more Bay of Pigs.

It's a little more like

absolute fuck-up.

Really need the blowback season on Expedition 33.

There's like, there's such a thing about this where, where I think the overwhelming narrative is like, oh, you know, it's like global warming.

It's like all the things that we're doing to fuck up the world that sort of have numbered our days and the days of our children.

There's a whole whole thing about like what it is to be an adult and bring children into this world and stuff like that.

I mean, that's like right out the gate in a way that I was like, oh, really?

For real?

The reason y'all broke up is because she didn't want a kid?

Okay.

Yeah.

But there's like a,

I see that, but also

the thing that I see overwhelmingly is like, oh, it's like World War I stuff.

It's like big time, like World War I.

And I kind of waffle back and forth.

I'm like, well, am I just saying it's World War I stuff because it's French and things are going bad for them?

But like, you know,

there's an area where you're basically in these like super tall trenches.

There's the whole imagery of, like, you know, there's lots of dead bodies like in piles, in the mud,

stuff like that.

Like, you're walking on them sometimes.

There is, and like, you know, World War One also came with that whole thing of like, why are we bringing children into this world that, like, we lost an entire generation, et cetera, et cetera.

Like, all of that language was still there in that.

So, I, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot, there's a lot of all kinds of all your different flavors of

apocalyptic fatalism they're in there

it's like a nice little smorgasbord

whichever whichever reading you want to apply on this thing it's gonna it's gonna give you the leeway for it for sure um yeah and so like that's the basic side of you then go you survive the doomed landing uh and begin to slowly build a team of survivors uh all of whom you have a past connection with from when you lived in lumiere which is i think the last city on the planet, I guess, or in the world.

I don't really know what it the okay, maybe not.

Don't tell me because I don't fucking know.

No,

it's not a big spoiler thing.

It's just like set up lore that like Lumiere, there was a thing called the fracture, basically.

Right, right, yeah, yeah.

I've heard what this broke their chunk of Lumiere off.

And there's like some sort of, yeah, and there's like some sort of dome or something involved.

But there is, there's like an implication that like, there is more out there, or there was more, or we're only part of something, or, you know.

right right i just know the whole rest of the world i haven't got that answer yet but the so-called continent where the paintress and the what are the what are the creatures you were fighting called in this uh nevrons nevrons nevrons yeah and also the guestrols who are little paintbrush guys they're minions they're minions they are kind of minions they do talk like minions they speak in the french i think that i i might be wrong but i think their voice uh their voice lines are the same in both languages because they speak like fringlish

Oh, sure.

They kind of go back and forth.

Kind of like the song lyrics.

Often, like, you'll hear someone be saying Gustav over and over again, but then they'll say like Vashtavakana and stuff, and you're like, I don't know what that is.

Yeah, well, some songs do just straight up have what just seems to be English in them outright and just singing.

I've looked at the lyrics

for some of them.

They're doing kind of like a near thing, but like not entirely a thing Yeah, they are they are doing a very similar thing I think in music

for like Japanese sounding like those soundtrack,

you know Oh, I see like lyrically you're saying I thought you meant just musically in general Yeah, I thought you were saying Nier is Nier's soundtrack is of course referencing a whole history of music that includes some French music So I you know, I think that I've seen some people be like it's just jacking Nier's whole style.

I mean yeah it goes way beyond that.

There is some of that but like that is not Nier did not invent soft lady singing.

There's a lot of Kajiya Yuki in here, who did a lot of like anime soundtracks, like still does, anime and game soundtracks going back for two decades now.

And she used a lot of French in her songs anyway.

And it was like a mix of like French stuff, like Baroque stuff, and then like techno.

And you get moments of that where I could swear it was her music in this.

So that's very funny.

That's a nice little fun thing.

Yeah, so you know, my

the structure of this game, I think, is pretty standard to people who've played other RPGs like it.

In that after you get out of the introduction, which is a series of fairly linear kind of dungeons,

you get a little bit of an open world, like a top-down world map in the kind of classic JRPG style.

Not where you're in, you know, you literally have like a tiny character running around a zoomed-out, in this case, kind of tilt-shifted map of the surreal landscape.

Yeah, I don't know if it actually is, but it really feels that way,

certainly.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely supposed to evoke that, I think.

Yeah, for sure.

There's a lot of this game where I'm like, is it supposed to feel like that?

Like, is it actually doing this, or does it just feel like this because of like shared influences I and this game have?

For instance, because there is like a, it's like an overworld map JRPG, like when you're running around and then you get a vote out kind of thing.

But for example, just to answer you, Austin, the a lot of the dungeons that I've encountered so far give me such Final Fantasy XIII vibes like the whole thing smacks of fabula Nova Crystalis.

I don't know how else to put it where it's like it's these like segments and then you you stop when there's like

In 13 there was like some platforming stuff that's like highlighted by like a circle and then in this you've got like your grappling hook or like you got to find a ladder to go up.

And I genuinely don't know if it's just like this is evoking the sort of PS3 era

3D RPG that I'm like used to or if it is actually trying to feel like that or not.

Which is curious to sort of piece out.

Again, both of y'all are in Act 2 at this point.

I'm very early in Act 1 recruiting the kind of starter set of characters.

And so it feels like I've still been in a fairly linear

game at this point.

There are, you know, side bosses.

What are they actually called?

It says that someone's like, this is dangerous, but what's that?

What are they actually?

Oh, they're like chromatic bosses

who are like side fights that seem to be optional.

Yeah, there's the chromatic bosses, there's the mimes, and then there's like the little side boss areas that just say danger under where they are.

Yes,

I learned about the mimes on this podcast, by the way.

I did not realize that there were straight-up mimes in this game.

There's a mime in the opening area.

There's a mime in the

like before you even go on the expedition, you can find and fight a mime.

Maybe

you're a master mime.

I'll find you a video or something.

There's like mimes in like each main spot.

I think I fought three now.

Damn.

And they give the first, I don't know what the first one gives you because I didn't beat him.

I gave up because I didn't realize it was a thing at the time.

I thought it was just like a tutorial boss.

But the second one, I think, gives you the baguette outfit for some of the characters.

It's like the beret and then the like stripey shirt with the overall.

I love that they're called that.

That's really good.

The first one gives you the music from Lumiere to play in your camp.

Oh, fun.

Which is what I, which is, you know, what I, where I, what I listen to when I'm in camp.

I hang out in camp.

Anyway, the thing I was going to say was, you know, at this point, besides those, it's been fairly straightforward and linear in the sense both of I have an objective, I have to work to that objective.

And in fact, most of the world map at this point has had been at least blocked off by like mountains or rubble or whatever to be like, ah, you just can't go over there quite yet.

And I think, Sylvie, you were talking about Final Fantasy 13.

And like, at the time that that game came out, the big critique of it was like, wait a second, this isn't my Final Fantasy.

This is so closed off

and not, you know, I'm not exploring things.

I'm not taking things on my own level.

And I think that the dungeons similarly feel like very, it's a straight line with sometimes there's a hallway off to the side that you can like dip into for a pickup.

And I'm curious if that has remained the same.

And also, I guess I should say at this point,

there is no fucking map in the dungeons.

I think that's like one of the biggest annoyances that I have with this game at this point.

But does that change at all?

Does that stuff, not the map, obviously, but the

overall like openness of the game?

So, like I said, I'm still pretty early in Act 2.

Janine, maybe it opens up more for where you were.

I think I'm a little bit earlier than you in Act 2, probably.

Oh, okay.

I started it, and then I was like, it's late.

Okay, I might be like a little bit ahead then.

I think you might be.

So I haven't really done any actual dungeons in Act 2.

For the most part, it does feel like

there's a critical path in the dungeon, and then there's some, there's a couple branches that'll lead usually to like a treasure or maybe an optional boss.

There was one time where I thought I had to fight something to progress and kept getting my ass beat by it, so I lowered the difficulty, and then it turned out it was an optional boss for later.

Which, you know, again, speaks to the we need a map, but

for the most part, everything has felt felt very straightforward.

Um,

I, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where it's like

top-down.

If I could look at a map, I think I would say, like, yeah, this is pretty straightforward.

This is pretty straightforward.

Like, you go this way, and then there's like a lot of side brand.

There's a lot of like sort of intricate little side areas that you can get into, and then you pick up just like

a point to put in your thingy.

Yeah.

A lot of like very detailed little diversions for what feels kind of like a small thing, which is cool, but also it's so easy to get turned around and it can be so hard to see what the critical path is.

And each main area that I've been to has had like, okay, here's your critical path.

And then like, here's a diversion that is like a big diversion.

Like, it's not a thing where you can peek down the hallway and see the dead end and be like, okay, this is the, okay, I'll just pop down here.

It's like, okay, there's the way that I, the way that I've learned to tell what the diversion is, is like, okay, there's climbing footholds.

Okay, there's like,

I can see there's like a jumping thing there.

So that's probably the side path to get, you know, the

new the

beret or whatever.

But like, it's so easy to turn around, to get turned around, especially, you know, every now and then I'll go back to try and clean up an enemy that I couldn't really fight at the time, but I'm a little bit stronger and I want to kick their ass now.

And it's really really easy to get, it's so easy to get lost.

And also, because the lack of mini-map is such a thing, a lot of the guides don't really have much for you.

They're not doing their own maps, certainly.

So they'll be like, Yeah, you go here, and the mime is if you go left and right, and then you look at you, there's like an archway, yeah, and then you want to, like, there's like a blue tree, not the blue blue tree, but the like slightly off-blue tree.

He's by that.

And it's really, it's not helpful.

It's It's annoying.

It's a little frustrating.

But it's, yeah, I don't know.

Some levels it works better than others.

Some levels it feels right.

It feels like, yeah, this place is a mess.

And some levels it just feels like,

I don't know.

I don't,

I don't know what this is supposed to be.

I'm always asking, like, what am I supposed to be thinking?

What do they want me to be thinking right now?

You're saying that in terms of like

exploration and like gameplay design stuff?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What, you know, what is this area you're trying to convey?

And like, sometimes I have an answer for that, and sometimes I don't.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I should, I will say that, like, right away, there's like a real

feeling of not, I don't want to say style over substance, because I think often style can produce substance.

Um, but you know, one of the very the first real I think dungeon after the main intro of the game is like an underwater walking through an area that is underwater and filled with coral and stuff.

And that it's not as far as I can tell, there's no like deep narrative.

I've not found a deep narrative reason for that yet, necessarily, but it is really striking.

But it has a feeling of,

and I, I want to be, I'm not making any sort of actual accusation here, but it feels a little bit like we found these cool assets on the asset shop and we made a cool underwater dungeon with them.

And I think it fundamentally works, but it doesn't, it's not like, oh, we have to go into the underwater.

Again, it's not, it's not, it is not literally, it's on land.

It's just suddenly the land is underwater and you're walking around.

And it's not like there's like an air bubble system.

You know, you're not doing Sonic the Hedgehog shit.

It is just visually you're underwater, and there's some like enemies that reflect that.

Janine, you know, you might go back to your war metaphor earlier because some of them have, you know, kind of

mines and whatever.

Yeah, like tied to them and stuff.

Yeah.

And you have like big whales in the background and stuff.

And that's, it's really, really striking,

but I don't actually know what to do with that quite yet.

And again, maybe I can get more information about that place.

I'm very, very early.

I'm not trying to diminish it.

But I do think that there is a degree of like, we can make,

you know, I think that the connection to surrealism is deep and real, like to art in general.

But I keep thinking of, I don't know if either of y'all know Remedius Varro, the artist who is a

surrealist painter.

And I just like, there is such a,

that is material that is working through

big ideas, but it's doing it in ways that are often like perplexing or destabilizing to the viewer.

And it's like, okay, like I might get somewhere with this stuff eventually, but I'm not off the top of my head, I'm not quite sure what I, what the thing is being communicated by this environment, so much as I am impressed by the aesthetic on display.

Um, and so I'm just, I'm still working through how I feel.

I got to play more of it.

I have to see more spaces.

Um, and also, I think some of the spaces, I don't know, you go to that manner that's kind of like a a hub area, it seems.

And it's like, okay, this is a cool place.

It doesn't have the sort of utility hook that I think of from great RPG hubs across time and space, across all our video games.

But it looks cool.

And like, is that enough for me to care about it as a place?

You know, I'm not sure.

There's a lot.

There's a lot in the game where it feels like information is kind of purposely being withheld.

Not necessarily, just kind of like

everybody has a history together, right?

They'll refer back to things and you have to kind of piece it together.

I'm thinking early on, you mentioned the Gustave, and I'm blanking on her name.

Is it Sophie?

Sophie.

Yeah.

You kind of piece together, like, oh, they broke up, and this is why they broke up, stuff like that.

And that just continues basically throughout the whole thing.

Where it's like they'll reference.

I really like that part of it.

I really dig it.

Where they'll just like refer refer to like, oh yeah, we heard this story about this expedition.

Or like they'll see something that like

it's kind of the

Book of the New Sun, Austin, describing a spaceship as a castle or whatever situation, where they'll see something and I'm like, I know what that is, but then they'll talk about it and they're like...

It's completely, a completely different interpretation.

And those are some of the times when I think it works the best, this sort of like narrative move that they're doing.

I think the core premise is just such a striking, strong, you know, it's funny because like, it's like I haven't played another premise about people who are going who are going to war because if they don't, they go, they'll die by the end of the clock ticking down.

Like, Xenoblade 3 came out two years ago or whatever, and it's a very similar premise.

But there is something punchy and hooky about it that I think carries a lot and like makes me anytime.

I'm like, am I having a good time?

I'm like, well, I want to, I want to know more about what's going on here.

Like, that's enough to keep me.

I was going to say, like, I think this game does a really good job at something that always kind of bugs me

when you are telling stories about people who knew each other before the camera started rolling, essentially.

Which is like, you don't get everyone's history together right out of the gate.

You can tell that they know each other,

that they're familiar.

You get this feeling, and you should get this feeling.

This is a correct and good world-building feeling, that this is a really small, tight-knit community because it is, because

it's a group of people who are isolated, who, like, you know, every one of them has lost their parents.

And, like, the thing that happens is like, because it's known, you're going to lose your parents at this point, because the number is like in its 30s.

It's, you know, everyone's going to be an orphan sooner rather than later.

There's a whole culture of like orphanages and foster parents and also apprenticeships

and like all of these things for like to basically make sure that kids are being taken care of.

But it also means that these kids, as they grow up, have really interconnected lives.

So like you'll get these little tastes of backstory about like, oh, hey, remember, we worked on that farm together.

And they don't like belabor it.

It's not, it's not, they don't literally say like, oh, hey, remember we worked on that farm together.

They'll be like, oh, God, this is like Project 30, 30, whatever, or something.

And then they'll like give you a few little tidbits here and there.

Or

they'll talk about

the night they met, or whatever.

And then

they weave it in a way that

feels like people who are actually reflecting on the moment and their past and not just

displaying their history for an audience.

That stuff's really neat.

It's really cool.

That stuff is really good.

It works really well, and I think it fits really well with the

sort of

big thing that they try to get into is the difference between the gamage, which is this peaceful sort of like ceremony, and then like we talked about how it goes real bad when you start your expedition, and it is there's blood everywhere, like people are getting straight up murdered, you have to deal with death all of a sudden, and the way that the characters will sort of reach for each other and bring up the past and like these little

there's like inside jokes that they'll bring up.

I think a lot about um

Gustave and Mayel have like a running thing about throwing rocks at the paintress and like it keeps it comes up a few times and every time I do I'm like oh yeah, this is a big brother and his little sister talking about like a thing that like

that has been going on for like however long and you can you can feel it, you know, like the interpersonal stuff I think is one of the real strengths of this game so far.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I will say the other big strength for me, anyway, is uh the battle system.

Um, there's so much happening here in the gameplay design that I did not expect, even from that earlier description I gave.

Um, you know, at a high level, it's a turn-based RPG.

Uh, you have you know, your line of characters, they have theirs.

I think the first thing most people talk about is the fact that it has a sort of quick time event system a la the Mario RPG games, um, yeah, the only ones to do, but I think that's like a very clear, big influence.

By that I mean that when you do any of your attacks, except for like a basic attack, you will have a, or shooting your kind of gun, your ranged weapon, you can kind of aim at like weak points and stuff and burn.

One of your resources you have these kind of like action points you can burn one of those as a bullet to like hit a weak point and do a bunch of damage or maybe you have a buff that makes your gun do fire and they're weak to fire so you want to do that whatever it is but most of mostly you have like a basic attack that's free to do and then you've you've skills that you can use which cost AP and when you use one of them

there is a quick time event on the screen where you've like hit a button timed to

the attack animation to sort of like do the damage.

There's a whole there's a meter on screen or there's like a button prompt on screen to be clear for attacking at least.

And so you know maybe the the one attack will just be it shows up once and you can time it to try to get like a perfect attack if you hit it at the right moment.

Or there's other ways.

It might be like a multi-hit combo and so they they pop up in a certain rhythm and a different multi-hit combo is a different rhythm you get how that goes then

on defense the other kind of active part of this is there's a dodge button and a parry button that you can hit to try to parry or dodge incoming attacks dodging is easier you there is a perfect dodge but there's also just like i've dodged the attack safely if you hit parry with the perfect dodge timing you will parry and if you can parry every attack whether that's a single big one or like a series of light attacks or something if you can parry all of the ones that the enemy is throwing at you, you get to do a counter-attack.

And there's some other later game things that involve that sort of same type of quick time event-y,

you know, back-and-forth response stuff.

I think that's like what most people talk about.

So maybe we should start there before we dig into the other parts of this combat system.

Janine, you and I both were having some parry trouble.

I think I kind of got it finally.

You get it when you learn the rhythm.

Right, right.

Then you change enemies, and there's a whole different crop of shit to you.

I think I hear the sound now, Janine.

I think I can hear the sound.

I think I've trained myself to hear the sound.

Reportedly, there's a sound when the moment is you're supposed to attack.

I spent the whole first day of playing this game trying to parry too early.

And then what I learned was there is a sound with some, at least some attacks.

And most importantly.

I agree with some attacks, yeah.

But the thing that taught me was that sound for those attacks triggers later than I think it should.

And so I've been able to bring that into new enemies and realize, oh, I'm just trying to parry way too early.

I'm parrying where like Sekaro wants me to parry, but I need to be parrying like after that in a way that is weird.

The way that I ended up improving my parries a little bit, because I've gotten better also,

is that I would, what I would do is I would dodge when I had the first impulse to parry and then parry right after dodging.

Oh, okay.

And that helped my time.

That's really good.

I was doing the literal animal crossing close your eyes when you fish thing to get my parries off and it was working.

Oh, I cannot do it.

I'm entering the sound what I mean.

Like I know there's a sound now because I close my eyes when you fish.

I tried to do that.

I tried to do that like the other day and it was just like, I just, I just got creamed.

It did not.

It's hard.

Yeah, I am fully on the I gotta tank the first hit from this enemy and then I'll figure it out afterwards.

Yeah.

I mean, there's no fucking thing.

I mean, there's there's straight up a tool tip that says like, hey, if you're having trouble parrying, try dodging.

The time is a little more forgiving.

10%.

And it's worth saying the parry, not only does the parry let you do a counter-attack, but parries and and perfect dodges also give you AP back to do your stronger attacks.

And then it's just like, there's already a bunch with just, hey, what if you have a mage?

What if you have a melee character, etc.?

That's already a lot of depth.

But there's so many cool little systems in this game mechanically in its combat design.

You know, it's not just are you balancing your AP right by doing regular attacks and gun shots and da-da-da-da.

It's it's elemental affinities, which I think are pretty standard, but it's also these passives you get.

Are those called Pictos?

Is that what they're called?

Pictos, and I think after you master them, you use Lumina points.

Luminas.

Luminas.

Yeah.

So yeah, you have these kind of like passive,

you have these kind of items that you can equip called Pictos.

They're like magic buffs, basically, that do things that are like, oh,

you know, you have

a 50% chance to do double damage on a basic physical attack.

Like, you're not using a special thing, but you're going to do more damage.

Or you have, Janine, there's one that you really like.

Is that roulette?

Is that the one that you really like?

Oh, yes, roulette, where there's a 50% chance that you'll do half your damage or 200% damage.

Right.

Which for a multi-hit attack goes, is really good math.

Especially, you also have a character who, for instance, can sometimes just do 200% damage.

Let me tell you,

I figured out a way to have her doing 200% damage all the time.

Right.

Same, basically.

Yeah.

And that's a character who has stances that she can switch between, including the one that is 200% damage stance.

And you can get weapons that also have effects.

So you can get a sword of her that just starts you out in that stance.

And then she has abilities that if you're in that stance, it will maintain that stance.

Or an ability that

if you

use this,

you'll get ability points and you'll maintain the stance for another turn.

So you can really just change that in the entire building.

That's the entire build I'm running with her.

It is the first character.

There's something I always like about games where, like, because every character has their own sort of mechanic built into it,

that means the build crafting for them is so varied and really engaging in that way.

I love when you're able to sort of crack open a character in the way that this game lets you.

This is the part that does remind me so much of Slay the Spire because it's not just, oh, what are your attacks?

It's like, oh, what if you got this special passive that would open up a whole new way of playing a character or maximizing one way of playing a character.

And the way the pictos work is you can equip them to, and when they're equipped, their passive work, but after you win four fights with them, that passive goes into a menu that anybody in your party can use.

Whether or not the actual Picto is equipped, you have a different resource, you have a different like meter that you can fill that increases over time that like takes certain amounts, you know, like a really good one might cost eight, you know, Lumina points, but a kind of pretty basic one might cost two or three or even one.

And so you're like building a sort of build of those on top of your regular character stat build.

And that stuff just means you get to be really expressive along with whatever skills and like powers you're picking for your characters.

Because it's very clear that even like Gustave, who's the main guy you start as, is like, oh, you could build him out to be kind of like a big physical attacker, or he gets a heal really early.

You could make him kind of tanky and healy if that's the way you want to go.

And so that plus weapons also build on

different stats and stuff, sort of sort of Dark Souls style.

There's a lot of Frontsoft in here.

There is a lot of Frontsoft in here.

I see it the most with the dodging and parrying, obviously.

Some of the enemy design.

The fact that there's bonifiers in this fucking game.

Yes.

They literally do respawn to enemies when you restaurant.

Your flasks, your refills.

Yeah, your flasks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Unlike, I think a lot of games, like the consumables in this, are a fixed amount that restore when you rest

at a banner from a past expedition or you go to camp.

I think they happen when you camp.

it must happen when you rest at camp, right?

You must get them back.

Yes, absolutely.

And so, like, there's all that sort of that fun thing of like, it's not, can I go grind out enough healing potions to like force my way through this boss fight?

It's

given the resources I have, which will always be the same resources I have, unless I grind a higher level than like, or like go find another, you know, healing flask to bring in or a res flask or whatever to bring in.

Can I fight this fight?

I will say some of us have a brain that doesn't do the thing it's supposed to which is hit a fight that says like no you can't win this because there's parries in this game my brain goes well I could do it I could do it

you could that first chromatic fight that you can find I was like well it's kicking my ass but like I just have to parry eight times in a row and I did it just took me an hour but I did it now could I have left and come back an hour later and it would have been easier yes a 100%.

It didn't take me an hour.

It took me like 30 minutes.

No, I didn't.

There are fights where I think that they're catering specifically to that, where it's like, if you take one hit, it will wipe you out completely, even if you're like a decent level.

So I think there's definitely they are catering to like, if you just want to like play this and have a nice time, cool.

If you want to,

if you want to dude perfect your way through a boss fight, do that also.

Trick shot simulator, but

make it a JRPG.

The other fight that's...

It's one of the other characters gimmicks when you build them is you have to do a trick shot every time for every special move.

Cursed.

There is that danger zone that you could find right out as the world opens up for the first time.

For the first time you go to the it's not even open.

You just go to the overworld map.

And that one I was like, oh, this boss starts with four consecutive turns.

And like, so I would have to parry perfectly or dodge perfectly all of that stuff to even get one round in.

I'm going to come back.

Or you get your

equip your Lumina that always gives you the first turn, no matter what.

Yep, I don't know what that is.

And then you lean into, you lean into Mile, for instance, has a thing where it's like, this will apply defenseless.

And then she has a thing where it's like, if you do this and the guy is defenseless, you get another turn immediately.

Right.

So you do that sort of build.

Yeah, that's fun.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a position.

There's a lot of like really conscious, you can like really consciously,

if you want to tailor what everyone has to an individual situation, you can also,

you know, tailor every individual character to just work on their own.

You can also be like, okay, well, for Mile, her, I'm going to sort of focus on having her detonate burns, stacks of burn, and then you can give everyone else Lumina that's like,

when you aim and fire, there is a 20% chance of applying burn or whatever, so that everyone has the ability to build on to what this one character is detonating from.

And that stuff feels great.

The thing I keep thinking about is like, I wish that Metaphor, Refontasio, had had some of these gameplay elements,

or just not even these particular ones, but I didn't get through all of Metaphor.

I know, Sylvie, you were playing that game for a little while, right?

Yeah, I also didn't end up finishing it.

I got like 70% of the way through it and enjoyed my time with it.

But

you know how life happens.

You don't have to finish a meal to have enjoyed the meal.

I always say that.

Exactly.

It's okay to leave a little bit on the plate.

But if you're not bad for it.

I think I would have finished it if I was not at a point where I was like, okay, like I'm waiting for the battle system to show me a new trick.

I'm desperate for something that I hadn't

encountered before to happen.

That's like not just a new take on something, but like a new take on what's already been in this game, but like something that I just, you know, I think Metaphor has one of those, which I think that the quick grinding physical attack stuff or like the outside of the turn-based combat stuff where you're just like one-hitting fights that are pretty easy for you, actually,

is good.

I think that stuff was great.

I would love this game to have that because there are definitely times where I'm like, all right, like I can I can clear all these enemies in 30 seconds pretty, or like one round pretty easily.

Just make them die.

Just don't make me spend the 25 seconds.

It's fine.

Well, you know, there's someone does get an attack that's also just like just one character.

The nice thing about

metaphor is that like you could do that before going into the fight at all.

You know what I mean?

Which was nice.

But my point being that like I I do think that there's some really, it's been a long time since I played a turn-based RPG that had

a turn-based RPG that was chasing this style of, or this degree of aesthetic.

I don't want to say complexity, but like fidelity, I guess.

And I don't want to say complexity because I actually kind of think sometimes it doesn't work for me visually, but I'll talk about that in a second.

But it's been a long time since I've played something with this much fidelity that also has some genuinely cool ideas around combat design or core verb design for what the gameplay is.

And to the degree that that's actually the big appeal for me for Claire, of Claire Obscura.

So

yeah.

How are you, narratively, are you in a place now where you're like, I'm fucking hooked.

I need to know what happens.

Or are you going, is this potentially a meal you won't finish, but enjoyed the bites of it you had?

It's kind of hard to tell.

There's been some like big things that have happened in the story that have I felt like, oh yeah, no, I knew that was going to happen.

Like there's been been some telegraphed things, and like, I think I'm kind of putting together that again, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

That just means you're foreshadowing, right?

But there's a degree to which the mystery early on was what hooked me.

And now that I'm like, oh, okay, I kind of see what's happening here, it's been a little harder to get back.

Sure.

I think that it's going to be the sort of systems-based stuff that keeps me more hooked into this.

The character building, the

seeing how these like skill trees build out at like late level and how I can turn the uh sort of path that I'm on with these characters, even like like turn the dial up on that or like pivot to a completely different build to see if that works better.

That's the sort of stuff that's really got its hooks in me.

Narratively, I think that it is

fine.

It's like it's fun.

I'm like digging it, but I've also I've played Final Fantasy X, you know?

Sure, yes.

That sounded way meaner than I meant it to be.

I am enjoying it quite a bit.

It's just also like thematically, they're working in very similar spaces.

I'm like, okay, I can.

There's a swing at the end of Act One that I found frankly disappointing.

But at the same time, it wasn't enough

to make me think, like, oh, this isn't gonna, there's nothing here for me anymore, story-wise.

Like, there's still a lot of...

I have a lot of questions.

It's just what those questions are changed.

And like, there's, you know, there are some things that I thought could

be

interesting that they closed the door on, but then it raised this whole other, like, well, okay, but if that's not true, then what about all this shit that I was assuming?

Right.

So I'm, it's one of those things where it's like, if I don't finish this game, I will look up how it ends.

You know,

it does have,

it does have its hooks into me in that way.

That's for sure.

So you don't have to worry about being the person who says something mean about this game.

The thing I'm going to say is the thing that I have been like pushing down in my brain since I started playing it, which which is sometimes I think this game has a Nintendo hire this man look.

You're right, though.

Which is to say, I

this is taste, right?

And I think that it's like I think the art design is like

really strong, especially the character, the

creature design, I think, is out of this world.

I think the environment design is hitting the thing it's going for, but I think that there's something about the way it's chasing fidelity and something about the way that like bloom and depth of field, which is like kind of applied in a weird way, where it's often like a little flaky around characters' faces.

It's like, yeah, and I can go in and turn the depth of field off.

I know this, but like, their default vision for this game is to have that, you know, on fucking max.

A lot of that stuff, and even something, something like the characters' faces, give me the sort of like, I, sometimes it looks like I'm playing someone's dream Pokemon game where everyone is lifelike, you know?

Like, there is, and like, it's not, that part extremely has been difficult for me to get over, if that makes sense.

Uh, and that might be the thing that breaks me.

It's just like, I don't, sometimes I don't like looking at the main characters.

Sometimes I don't like looking at even the world because it's so

it's not aesthetic.

It is aesthetically because, you know, this is all part, but technically, it's pursuing this, this, I don't want to call it photorealistic look, but this particular sort of fidelity that I think actually weakens some of the character and world design stuff visually to me.

And that's part of why I said before that sometimes it has this asset shop feel because the stuff feels like it's rendered for

use across.

Some of these lampposts could be in a game that's set in France and that's just it.

You know what I mean?

Like, and I get that that's what they're going for, but it doesn't, it isn't working for me for some reason.

It's definitely been hit and miss for me.

I think I was saying this to my partner when I was playing it, that it feels like it's like begging for just like a little extra stylization of the character designs with in regards to like you saying sometimes you just don't like looking at them.

There's like

all this whole world has like this.

I mean you've you've we talked about the like sort of painterly aspect of it, but the people just kind of look like here's my high-res character model.

Yeah.

And I feel like there's like it's begging for like self-shading or like something just like

exaggerate some proportional

change.

Because the creature design is just phenomenal.

Just like out of this world,

both literally and figuratively.

You know what I mean?

Both not of this world and also, wow, it's so good.

And I like the costuming for the human characters, like the protagonists, but I

need shoes.

Oh, my God.

Oh, you don't want to run around on the corpse beach with

your bare grippers out?

With the grippers?

Bro, it is gooey.

Why are you out here like that?

I know you can fly.

It's cool that you can fly.

You hover around, but but you're not always hovering.

Sometimes you let your feet hit the ground.

I genuinely have to not have her be my lead character because I get uncomfortable watching it.

I'm like, that would feel so bad.

I would hate that.

I'm getting like sympathy.

Sensory overwhelming.

She ran over to some water just so she could stand in some water for a second, clean all that goo off.

Rinse them off, yeah.

Rinse them off.

Now, the reason I do like playing as her, though, is because you don't get the like constant rhythm of the footsteps when she's flying around.

You get to just like zip around.

And that's the trade-off you make.

Do you want gooey grippers or do you want the sound of Gustav's loud ass fucking boots hitting the floor over and over again, which gets on my nerves for some reason?

I will say, like,

I don't know that I'm fully on board with you two in terms of the graphics.

I think

there's like, there's something that, like, I understand what you're saying.

No, I didn't.

This is the case thing.

I think it's, I think, this is a wildly popular game.

Clearly, it hit.

People do want Nintendo to hire that man.

I don't.

I think for me, the thing that's happening is it is so much in the space of like,

it reminds me of like playing a really cool PS2 game that none of your friends have ever heard of.

Yeah.

And you're just like, wow, this looks sick.

And it's doing all this weird shit.

And I can't talk to anyone about it because they think I'm making it up.

Like, that's what it's for me.

That's what I think.

So that's what it's hitting for me.

And like I think the like graphics of it sort of

it's it's evoking that in my in my head.

And like, yeah, I think it would look cool if they were doing like maybe like a like a watercolory thing or or something.

But

I also, you know, I'm looking at it I'm looking at a screenshot that I took right now of just like a just like a random victory screen, right?

And it's just so, it just makes me feel so much like

like picking up a obscure jrpg from like

from like a yeah from like a from like a bin where it's just like the back of this looks sick and just

yeah i i don't know um

EB games used bin yeah

I know that I am the outlier here it just isn't there was something about specifically the human characters but not only that that is just like and again I don't know I don't have the I'm not not the art director, I don't have the answers here, you know,

and I, and I know firsthand what it's like to be like,

we have a directive, and that directive is we have to hit a certain fidelity, you know, goal

in order to make sure that we want to buy this expansion that we're working with and it does best with this kind of stuff.

With this type of stuff, yeah, totally.

You know, I think if this, here's, here's what I'll say is like, I think that the character or the creature design has, feels like a fucking ace team game, which is like some of the best creature design in the world.

This is kind of what I mean, right?

But the character design doesn't feel like that to me.

Yeah, the character design is like an attractive unity, not unity, unreal.

The unreal face maker thing that they put out.

This is what I mean.

Yes.

Exactly.

Well, and I think even some of the world for me feels like those style of assets that are then really artfully arranged to create surreal spaces, but they're not the assets themselves that have been made.

Again, this is not an asset shop game, and I'm someone who defends asset shop games, so I'm not, this is not an attack in that way, but I think that they don't feel like they have the heat for me that the creature designs do.

Um, and that if I end up bouncing off of it, I think that might end up being the whole of it, which is like, I wish that they, I wish that they leaned even more.

And I would love to be one of these fucking creatures.

Let me be one of these guys.

Let me be a Nevron.

When can I be a Nevron, please?

Please make the sequel where I get to be the Nevron.

Thank you.

There's something here where, like,

what you're touching on is something that I think a lot about.

And I think I've mentioned this sort of

angle of thinking about a game before on this podcast: of just like, you know, what did this look like in ideation?

Like, what did this look like on the whiteboards?

And I kind of wonder, like, is that maybe where some of that's coming from?

Where it's like, they had made all this cool stuff and then some stuff changed.

And it's like, well, I don't really know what to do with this cool stuff now.

So they put it in places.

And like,

it, it,

I just sort of realized, like, some there was an area I was, I was messing around in this weekend that, like, made me think so much of Vailgard.

Oh, for sure.

And I think, I think it might be that there might be a through line there of, like, at some point, I think this was probably something different.

And you can see these really cool things that I'm sure are in a lore document somewhere, but I don't really know what, you know, I only have what's in front of me, and what's in front of me doesn't explain this that well.

Um,

yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, but again, I, I get it, I get why it's hitting, and I, for me, the thing that's hitting most is the really strong narrative push, the overall surreal aesthetic, and then, like, I think that this is some of the most clever kind of turn-based combat design that I've played in a long time.

So, uh, it is, it is really worth that comparison to slay the spire, which is one of the most flattering gameplay design comparisons I think you you could ever make.

Absolutely.

Any other final thoughts on Claire Obscure?

We sort of touched on the surrealism, but I also want to shout out the not shout out.

I'm not saying like, wow, it's so good.

The humor.

There's like a, I think people, I think people often have this idea of French stuff as like cool and pretty and elegant.

French humor is like goofy and like corny and it's it's minions and it's rabbits, you know?

And that's in here.

And

like it's in here in a way that like

is often exactly what I expect as someone who like watched a lot of French cartoons as a kid where it's just like

so far no one has farted and that's good.

But I wouldn't be surprised if it happened

that kind of thing.

One of these little mind fuckers is going to fart.

Yeah.

But there is also a like a big goofy character who is big and goofy and says goofy stuff.

Right.

And then also has

genuine emotional bonds with characters that like took me by surprise because it's like, oh my god, that's that's like genuine affection of a kind you don't see in games.

Like it's so it's like a fully adult grizzled man hugging a big pillow creature because they're besties.

It's like, oh, that's nice.

Yeah.

Everything I see.

And also he says poof, woof, all the time.

He's great.

Yeah.

Is this the big guy that I saw while you were streaming it to me yesterday?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good.

He's like, makes sounds.

He's great.

Cheers about himself.

Yeah.

Shout out to that guy.

I love the voice acting move with him to have him be speaking English, but with a French accent in the English dub.

Oh, that's very good.

Like it's clearly a French voice actor doing that.

You have to do that again because of the humor thing, right?

Like because of the way he is.

Like you can't just, you can't play that straight.

Yeah, you can't have someone who sounds like they're from California saying like asterisk and obelisk,

you know?

Like, it's just not going to work out.

It doesn't

100%.

That's the real ludo-narrative dissonance, right there.

That's why they gave the main guy who has like real Robert Pattinson vibes still, even in the English, he's a British accent.

You know, he's still not.

So much like Robert Pattinson.

It's crazy.

It's wild.

You got to be careful.

I'm just seeing him as that.

Yeah, he's like a little.

His brow is a little different, but it's very, it's really different.

When you change his haircut and his facial hair and stuff,

he moves away from it but

that starter set that's just robert pattinson there he is yeah they should have gotten him instead of uh daredevil guy

daredevil guy does a fine job he's great but you know if you're gonna make but they should have got robert pattinson i agree or they should have made a different they should have made the other options look like like charlie cox like if you change his outfit it's not actually just changing his outfit it's like here's a different face cast we have i thought i thought you're gonna say they should have made another character look like taylor lotton

twilight guy right i mean they should have that would be great we could get him in here You know?

Yeah.

All right.

I think that that's probably our little segment on Claire Obscure.

We're going to take a quick break.

Come back to talk about some more stuff.

BRB.

And we are back.

And Sylvie, you brought a game today that I had not somehow not heard of at all, despite liking their previous game.

It's called Echo Point Nova.

And I guess the specific thing that has you going to it now is that there was an update that added like a roguelike mode.

But I would love if you could like set up what it even is.

Because

I know like 10 people who would adore this game, having put a few hours into it now, and I don't think any of them have even heard of it.

So.

Yeah, so this is a game by Echo Point Nova developed by Greylock Studio, if anybody is familiar with them.

Their last game, Severed Steel, I haven't played, but is similarly the sort of...

They make these movement-focused FPS games is basically the way I'd put it.

I don't know if we're going with mobility shooter or movement shooter anymore, but

they both fall under that category.

And the basic conceit of Echo Point Nova is it's an open world with a bunch of think of the

I'd compare it to the

what if the sort of like sky levels and tears of the kingdom were actually like fleshed out.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

It's a bunch of like floating platforms that you go to.

You've got, it's, like I said, very focused on mobility stuff.

You're going from point to point.

The flow of the campaign is basically

you're told to go to this place to collect an artifact that'll usually unlock a new mobility

ability for you.

And on the way there, you'll do these scans,

which is basically wave-based

combat releases.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And last

or two months ago at this point, I think it was towards the end of March, they released a rogue update for it.

So there's a roguelike mode now, which

basically you get dropped in at a random spawn point.

You're given,

depending on how much time you've put into it, you'll get a certain number of guns to start with.

And

you're tasked with doing a certain amount of

these scans.

And they've updated it so it's like every, instead of it just being like a one-wave thing like they are in the single player or in the campaign, I should say.

Because I've been playing the campaign mostly co-op afterwards.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, I realized after I died once that it was like, all players dead.

I was like, wait, all that suggests that there's co-op on this.

Co-op is really fun.

It's a four-player co-op.

Some things you can only do in single-player.

Like, some perks

are single-player only.

And then...

Some things aren't, which I find really interesting.

There's a slow-mo that you can activate.

Oh, is that not in the multiplayer?

That is in the multiplayer.

Everyone slows down when you use that.

Yeah.

But

the perk that makes it so it's always in slow-mo when you do a flip, which I love to do.

I love flipping so much in this game,

isn't available, just as an example.

Right, okay.

Yeah, I advise people to go look up like play of this game immediately because I think this is one of those games where if you hear us say it's an open world first-person shooter that focuses on mobility, you might think, oh,

Halo Infinite had a grappling hook, and that's an open world.

And it's not, it's just not that, right?

It's not even like, what if Titanfall was open world?

Like, it is not, it is more like what if you put guns back into Counter-Strike surfing, you know?

It has that degree of,

you know, the level of.

If you put the Mirror's Edge lady inside of a Track Mania world, yeah, what if you put Mania

from the Mirror's Edge Lady in Track Mania?

Because you're on a hoverboard.

So like it almost feels like

the character is like an air hockey piece when you've got your board going, and it rules.

The way I've been thinking of this game is,

you know, the way people talk about, like, why don't they make the whole plane out of the black box?

It's like, oh, they made the entire game out of the feeling of rodeoing Titans.

Like, the entire game feels like you are doing some crazy pilot movement stuff in Titanfall 2.

There is so much core clever design in this game for me.

And it's more than you can ride walls upwards in your hoverboard, which is very smart, more than you got a grappling hook that can zip you around and can even grapple onto.

I think the fact that it can grapple onto clouds is like

sort of the most like, oh yeah, they know what they're fucking doing.

You know, like, don't, it is, let yourself grapple onto clouds.

Why not?

It's like massively big-brained.

The perks that you get, like, all, most of them will tie into either like just making your weapons do crazier things.

For example, there's one I got in a run today where it's like shotgun shells will penetrate enemies.

And then I also got one where it's like they do more damage to walls.

So I'm able to blast through walls and stuff.

And I'm basically just chewing through things with a hand.

I did the rogue mode once and got the x-ray vision thing.

So I could imagine that

even if you get that, you're shooting through walls at guys you already know they're there.

That must be great.

The thing that I think is even more

like core, are you playing this game mouse and keyboard or controller?

I'm playing this on a controller.

Because I have like repetitive stress injury stuff with my hands, I can't really do a lot of mouse and keyboard shooters anymore.

I am like pretty much in the same place.

I do not,

I basically never played.

I tried to play, I played Valorant for like three months a few years ago and immediately got my wrists into a place that was like, oh, I can't actually keep doing this to the degree I'm doing it,

which is one of the reasons I ended up stopping playing Valorant.

But

I'm also playing with this with the controller, which I think is important because I don't know how if it could do the thing that I think is its most clever design element, which is it has it lots of games have a sort of snap aim or aim assist type thing.

Um, hey, in this one, it stays aim-assisted.

It stays kind of loosely locked, even if you move the thumbstick after you

use you left-trigger to aim down sights, it locks on to something that's at the center of your view.

So it's not just like locking from across the screen.

You have have to be pretty close.

And so, but then it does that.

And then, even if you're moving, it stays locked on.

It's almost like you're circle strafing.

And the reason that's important is because, like, you're on a hoverboard.

You're grappling, grapple hooking all around the place.

Sometimes you just get a little bit.

You're literally flipping.

And you're literally flipping.

And

all of, it seems to me, all of the weapons are non-hit scan weapons.

Is that no?

Every weapon is projectiles.

So you have to lead your target.

And so that means you'll be like on

hoverboard skating around the edge of a like the interior of a mountain or something you know on some like rock face locking on with your sniper rifle from across the thing and then being like ooh but he's moving in the opposite direction at a fast rate so i have to like readjust and lead the target just a little bit and then you pull the trigger and all this is happening in like three seconds, you know?

But it feels so sad.

It's like a sci-fi John Wu kind of like

the thing where you do the flip, but the guns are perfectly locked.

I was going to say like a chicken's head, but you know what I mean.

I do know.

Yeah, I do know.

I do know what you know, yeah.

And there's brake core playing, which is also really important.

It's also important.

The music of this game is so important.

Can you get this?

Can you get the soundtrack?

Is that available?

I think it's just available on the Steam page.

Yes, there it is.

Yes, it is by Floating Door.

It is so sick.

There's like

89 tracks.

Go into the menu and go out.

You can get to a different song if you want.

So there have been times when I'm like, I'm about to do this challenge.

Let me queue up the right track for me.

Yeah.

The feel, I just, you know, before you talk more about the rogue mode, trying to do the thing that you've been playing the most,

it's just, I don't know the last time I played a shooter that has this

smoothness and this, like, it's just such a joy to move around in this game.

It, like, I, I, the closest I can think of is there are some, there were some moments in Neon White that sort of scratched the same part of my brain.

But now is that Neon White is way more of, I consider it way more of like a puzzle game because you're trying to figure out like each run.

And this, because it's open world, because you're given like pretty much every tool, especially in rogue mode, where they just give you like

Austin.

I don't know how much you played with like your alt-fire stuff, but like you don't start with, there's an ability you can have to put down basically a jump pack, and you don't start with that in the campaign.

You unlock that like fairly early, but it's still an unlockable.

And then there's one that I never had, which is this: you put down an ice on the ground, and when you go over the ice it's speed you on your hoverboard your speed increases so you can get like they are fully um

this game is like fully dedicated to like momentum control and like your how you are able to handle it um yeah i will make rogue mode kind of hard oh it's really hard it's really it's really hard and the fact that it's wave based instead of just being one big challenge and again where i am in the main campaign at this point is it's all been you know kill these 19 guys and then you advance forward.

We have not talked a lot about the story.

Don't worry about it.

It's there.

You're like fighting like a paramilitary organization or something.

Yeah, in track mania levels, as Janine, you pointed out.

Like, that really is the vibe.

Which I think, you know, looking at this made me think, like, man, Ubisoft really fumbled Track Mania.

Oh, my God.

Remember, there was going to be, what was the shooter?

Shooter Mania?

What was it?

Oh, right.

There was also the RPGs.

Shoot Mania, Quest Mania.

I had to look at some Shoot Mania.

Shoot Mania is so funny.

Shoot Mania is a wrestling podcast.

It is.

Why was Shoot Mania not good?

Why didn't they, how did they not...

It should have been.

They should have made this.

It came out, didn't it?

It came out.

Yeah, yeah.

I watched Jeff Gerstwin play at least some of it, I'm sure.

I think I did the same thing.

I guess it was a versus game, I guess, importantly, versus...

Yeah, I guess this game has.

This game has...

I think I unlocked PvP at one point.

You can turn on PvP.

There's no matchmaking mode, but if you want to get in like a game with friends i think pvp is a toggleable perk that's very fun um that's very

i haven't tried but kind of want to yeah i i i really enjoy the perk system is super um

it's very like you're given an you it's really easy to get more points for perks especially in the campaign in the rogue mode you're leveling up like the rogue shop is what they call it and that'll eventually get you more perk points too.

Most of the perks in the rogue mode are from pickups though.

But you can still toggle them off and on, and you can really get like, you can really customize the way that you are specifically coming at this game.

My girlfriend really likes the sniper rifles, if I'm remembering right.

And like, there's like pop the sniper rifles bubbles

as is one of the

perks you get there.

Sorry, pop enemy bubble shield with a sniper rifle.

Right.

I got too excited, and my words all fumbled there.

And, or like

I am a big shotgun girly, so I loved,

like I said, the stuff that like makes it

you have better knockback.

Or like

one that I find really fun,

you can run into guys with your hoverboard and they'll go flying.

And if there's a perk where if you shoot them while they're flying, they'll explode.

Hell yeah.

It is a game that is like so focused on making you

feel as stylish as you possibly can while playing it.

And I think that's why it is so successful at what it's doing.

It understands that to do that, you have to really fine-tune the feel of the guns, the feel of all your mobility tools, and

make these sort of arenas that both have some limitation to what you can do with your movement.

Like,

you can't just

zoom around everywhere and just get everybody.

Like, you're going to get hit if you're not being smart about the terrain you're on.

But at the same time, I'll think of, I'm, there's like a tower that I'm thinking of.

That, like, it's like a hollow tower.

Um, and I'm probably just thinking about this because before we recorded, I was playing a run where I did a fight in here.

Um, we should be and so

the rogue mode is just the same map as the regular mode, right?

It is the same map, so it's not, it's not randomly generated levels.

I think there's probably people who are like, I can't do a first version shoot with randomly generated levels.

I've tried those before, they don't work.

This is is the regular ass level design.

Anyways, you're inside.

I don't think this would work.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, so, like, it changes what I do because I love to

a strategy that I really like.

I've sent you some

to y'all some footage of me playing just so like you guys would have a reference point of what I was talking about.

I like to go sort of around the edge and try and basically stay airborne as long as I can.

But this one forced me to go inside this tower, stay on my board, sort of grind around the side, the like edge edge of this cylinder, and work my way up and down taking guys out.

And it's like,

it like forces you to adapt in really fun ways because they have crafted the specific levels.

Yeah.

If this was generated, like I said, I don't think it would work nearly as well.

Also, sometimes you're taking out mechs or giant planes.

Who talks so much shit?

They talk so much shit.

My guns are bigger than yours is what they say all the time.

Or get ready for your hospital bill.

The enemy dialogue is really funny.

Well,

they do just get completely fucking worked.

So,

yeah, and I think something that's interesting about it is you were just talking about

the ability to

the need to

really understand the space and like make strategic plays.

But it's again, if you're not watching footage or you haven't played this game yet, it's not, we're not talking about Counter-Strike plays.

We're not talking about Call of Duty plays because the space, the spatiality in this game is so interesting.

There's such big spaces.

You can move so far, so fast.

Even though enemies, a lot of the enemies are like a guy with a little submachine gun, you know, who is going to like

zip in behind you and just fire a few shots at you, sometimes in a little hallway.

There are parts of in exploring the environment where you'll maybe sometimes go into something that looks like a sort of little facility or base or something, and you'll be bouncing bouncing around the hallways a little bit.

But generally speaking, it is more about this kind of zoomed-out:

do I understand where the big center point of the map is?

Do I understand where there's a little safe hallway I can duck into?

Do I know where there I saw some health pickups 30 seconds ago because I'm like suddenly low on health and I gotta like rush over there before I die and have to restart the whole thing.

I'm out of ammo and my shotgun, I need to look for this.

Every ammo type is a different shape, so you like learn to look for the specific shapes of like what ammo, the ammo specific.

Exactly.

It feels a little bit more like playing an Unreal, like unreal tournament 2003 or something and knowing map layout than it does yeah and it's like still way faster than than even that it's um but playable with a mousing keyboard or sorry playable with a with a controller i was so sure this would be a mousing keyboard game and i was gonna be like maybe i'll play a little bit of it for the for the podcast but i'm probably not gonna get too deep into it but like i this i might keep playing i might keep playing this uh which i hey let's play sometime i would love to let's do let's do some rogue mode well and some the thing that i was gonna say was like one of the things that's so so interesting you're the comparison to um god what was the the first person uh neon neon white neon white um like you said it's more of a that game is more of a puzzle game uh and part of the thing that's so good about this is like it's okay to fuck up you're constantly improv you know improvising around whatever your current situation is and you want to do well and if you lose you you know you restart and try to get it right but it isn't there's there's a solution that you're trying to optimize towards there might be strategies that are optimal strategies for a moment, but there's not like one way to run through a challenge or a, what is it called again?

It's a scan, a scan.

A scan.

It is more just like, oh, it's good to do this type of thing or I know where the pickups are on this level or whatever.

And I think that part of my trouble with Neon White was my desire to optimize meant that I actually didn't have a good time with the optimization game because it felt like optimization was, anything less than optimization was failure.

And in this, I get to feel sick when I happen to optimize something, but it's not required of me, you know?

It is a game that lets you feel like the 12-year-olds that cook you on Call of Duty in a lot of ways.

Oh, yeah.

Like, you don't need to, like, something that I enjoy about it is there's a lot of accessibility settings and stuff, too.

Like, you can tweak the difficulty a lot.

We talked about aim assist.

There's a lot of settings for adjusting aim assist.

You can change the way that it works, things like that and i think that goes a long way for something as fast-paced as this um

like i i it is weirdly like both able to do the power fantasy thing really well because you are gliding through the the the sky you are taking out waves upon waves of these like hover crafts and mechs and guys who are throwing down turrets who are my least favorite enemies in this game by the way The turret guys suck.

Every time I'm in a thing and it says more sappers in wave two, I'm like, okay, great.

But at the same time, you feel like you are a glass cannon.

You're very fragile.

You kind of have to keep your wits about you.

And it never feels like you're just getting beaten down by the game

if you're getting hit or if you're

not executing on all of the fun movement mechanics and stuff.

Also, we skipped this.

Do you get a pickaxe?

You can Minecraft.

Yeah, you gotta

Minecraft pickaxe in this case.

Yeah, so something that's not in rogue mode that I don't know how much you of the campaign you tried, Austin, is there's a lot of agility.

Oh, orbit fucking agility orbs, let me tell you.

Yes, I know.

I'm chasing those orbs.

Yeah.

And I've spent a lot of time

playing a two-player has been really fun because my girlfriend and I will go off in like different directions on a platform or whatever.

And she'll just be like, oh, I found

an agility orb.

And I'll be like, okay, just stay there.

I'll come get it.

And instead of finding the way to get in, I'll just dig through a wall and be like, hey, I'm here.

It definitely can lets you have those shortcuts, too, if you just want to be like point A to point B.

And then there's just like, like you said, there's the agility orbs.

There's some other hidden stuff, like, you know,

hats or like,

what's the name of the thing that you can get bonus points for?

It's not perk points.

There's some other type of.

I don't remember what it was that I was finding.

There are perk points, but I don't know if it's what you're saying.

Yeah, there was something else that I found hidden in the ground at some point.

But you have like a little radar that can point out, like, oh, there's a, there's an agility orb somewhere here.

Yeah.

It's like sometimes it's below you.

And like, yeah, you could try to like jump off the little floaty sky island and try to find your way around.

Sometimes I just dig.

Sometimes I'm just digging straight down.

Why not?

Dang it.

Let me just keep clicking this right step.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Game's good.

Yeah, and

it's great.

It's like, I really,

if you're into like high-speed shooters and like old school shooters in a way too, like I was something that really made me

like this game immediately got its hooks into me was

When

I started playing it I immediately got the feeling of I don't know if either of you ever played like old tribes very tribes.

Yeah,

that's what I was trying to figure out

It is like they made like tribes surfing like a key aspect of the game.

And that is like when I was like 14, that lit my brain.

they need to put the disc thrower thing in in here the disc fuser they do tribes in here please

I guess it's still is it still in early access or is it no this game came out this it

was fully like full release last September yeah but it is also getting updates still like

of some sort right

yeah the

rogue mode was added in

March and then they added there was a

they just added a bunch of new guns in April.

The Sonov shotgun that I keep getting in every roguerun I've been doing.

And like, some, so they, they, they're very much on top of like hot fixes and balancing and stuff like that.

It seems like it's got a pretty, um,

I'm not like in any like Discords or whatever, but it does seem like there's an active enough community that they're still supporting it pretty well.

Nice.

Um,

yeah, it's just a great time.

Shout outs to you.

Also, you can put stickers on your hoverboard, and when you flip, you see them.

I gotta do more flipping.

I watched, I was was watching a gameplay, and you were flipping all the time.

I need to just flip more.

It's just not in the horizontal flip and the vertical flip.

I like that there's a distinction.

Yeah.

That's good.

I watched the Power Ranger movie too much as a kid, and I saw Tommy with his board in the beginning of that when they're all parachuting down.

This is playing for somebody, I promise.

And it just, it ruined me for this game.

I can't, whenever I've got a free moment to do a front flip or a a backflip, I'm like, ah, yeah, might as well.

Especially if I get perks.

I got a perk today, which was like triple damage when you're in the middle of a flip.

Oh, incredible.

Wow.

Yeah.

The flip master is here.

It's crazy.

Sick.

Yeah.

Cannot recommend it enough.

It's been a real highlight of the past like six months or so since I picked it up.

Amazing.

Yeah, I'm trying to keep playing some of it.

We're going to hit a few other quick things, actually, before

we answer our first side story question, I think.

Janine, you had an update for a game you talked about before on

the first episode of the show?

I think so.

I think it was.

So, Infinity Nikki.

The community has been blowing up.

I don't know if the boycott's still on.

Oh, and there's some complicated stuff behind that.

That's like some real minute gotcha things of like they, there were only the outfits only had 10 pieces and then they did one that has 11 so you have to pull for it more and also the upgrade system doesn't work the way people thought it was going to and and they made one thing that was happening every two weeks happen every three weeks and and so there's the boycott is happening mostly my understanding is because of some like

things that have changed to make it a little bit less uh generous

which valid it was i wouldn't have called it particularly generous to begin with.

Um, not the worst I've seen, but you know, I get it.

Yeah, but they also added multiplayer.

Um, and before multi before multiplayer was like a thing of like you could see pictures that other people took, and that would like load in their avatar, and you could, like, take a picture with them, and that was kind of it.

Okay, okay, um, kind of like a chat system, too.

Style savvy.

Yeah.

Um,

so they added an island where you can interact with people, like, live,

but it's terrible.

Um, it also came with a lore rewrite that the Infinity Nikki loreheads are furious about.

And, like, uh-huh, I, yeah.

In brief, the game originally started with you, like, finding a dress in the attic that transported you to a world where a woman was being tortured, and then she transported you into another world.

Oh, the Drew Stanley blink over here.

Yeah,

but now there's this thing where, like, the universe blows up, and then there's this, like, woman who's made out of, like, galaxies and broken stuff who's cool and like aloof, and just probably you, but from the future or something.

Um, and she like

you she saves you.

I didn't really like I watched the cutscene, but like, I don't,

whatever, it's it's there's universes now, it's multiverse, they multiverse it.

Um, that's infinity Nikki, okay.

They they they brought back a thing that has been in a thing in the Nikki franchise, which is the idea of the sea of stars, which is like the

home of the universes.

It's like space, but it's like a galactic, like a dimensional space.

Yeah.

So they brought that back, and that is in this, instead of being kind of like a liminal thing where there's like a guy and his little sister, like it was in the last game,

It's a space, it's like some islands, and everything's very sparkly and pink and purple and blue.

And you have a special set of daily missions that that you do there where you hold a button and then some stars shoot out of a thing and then you go and collect the stars.

You can sit on a teeter-totter alone.

Sometimes that's a daily mission.

There's a little island.

Well, you could do it with someone else, but it's like it takes a long time to contact someone.

So you mostly just to complete the daily thing will just sit on it alone and then leave.

There are flowers that you can touch and then they light up.

So sometimes you have to touch a few of them and light up and then you get your daily on that.

There's an island where you can turn into the different animals and walk around very slowly, but only in that really small, confined area of where the animals are.

And you can't really do any like interactions or anything.

And you can see other people moving around.

So like, it'll be like you're a dog and then that person will be a horse and you just stand there.

And then there's also,

there's some other, there's some other bullshit, but then there's also multiple little like gathering games where it's like

put 20 coconuts in the coconut basket and you can only carry one coconut at a time

and sometimes you can't get your daily done without doing one of those and it takes like 10 fucking minutes and they're supposed to be multiplayer progress it's supposed to like as other people are also doing it it contributes to yours but usually when I've played it no one else is fucking doing it so I just do it alone and it feels like the worst Barbie Dreamhouse mini-game ever okay but if you described everything you said but it had, God, what was the name of that game?

You were like the little girls in like Soviet style, like abstract.

Yeah, Tomorrow Children.

There is a degree of it being like that, except

bad because there's no variety.

You know, Tomorrow Children is nice because it's like, just do the thing you like doing.

Do you want to go mine stuff?

Okay.

Do you want to shoot things?

Okay.

Do you want to build stuff?

That's fine too.

Like, go nuts.

You want to just coordinate stuff?

That's great.

Have fun.

But this is just like the only thing you can do is like run around and like pick stuff up.

My, from people who maybe didn't listen to that first episode, my impression of Infinity Nikki from seeing you play some of it, hearing it described, is that it is a game about fashion that takes its players not seriously necessarily, but like treats them like people who like to play video games and like gives them kind of interesting things to do, has some, you know, some clever level design and some interaction stuff and story stakes.

Yeah, but I can just mean as a game that like the platforming is fun and the

exploration is kind of interesting.

And none of that feels like what you've described.

What you've described does feel like a game for like the sort of children's game that doesn't take children seriously.

You know, yeah, it feels that island to me reminds me so much of the

era of quote-unquote girl games that gave girl games a bad name and that's like so much of what the Nikki series has been cool for is being like, you know, you can have a game about fashion and about and about this stuff and you can have a story that's interesting and like that takes big swings and has like has like a really unique fantasy sort of situation, all of this lore and you know then you can add in all these other like sort of mini game elements and like you can do cool stuff with it.

But then this multiplayer island is just like, pick up 20 coconuts.

Pick up 20 stars.

Put them in the star bottle.

Share your outfit colors.

Like it's

a

real

whiff.

And like, I understand people being mad about the gacha stuff because gacha is inherently exploitative.

And

I would not, again, I would not say that I've played games where the gacha was generous.

And I've been like, you know, I think they're doing their best here in terms of like the company saying, make a gacha game, but then kind of letting them

have some freedom there.

I've played games where it feels like, yeah, no, you can play this for free and have a really good time and not feel held back.

I don't think that's true in Infinity Nikki just by nature of abilities being attached to outfit sets.

I think there are some kindnesses there where like you don't get duplicates until you've completed a set and like you know there's some concessions but like the pity system is not great like so there's already stuff where it's like they're not you know they're not being generous I understand people being pissed at that

but I'm I think I'm way more pissed at the fact that they made this island that has again has its own separate set of daily things

like you know gotcha games have your dailies that you do and then you get your currency and then you can and it has its own set of daily things to do every day with its own new set of currency for

rewards like poses and whatever for photography.

And this stuff is so fucking boring.

And you have to do it every day.

And there's not that many things to do.

And there's not that many things to do them.

Like the dailies and the other things are like, you know, kill five enemies.

And like, fine, the world is big.

You can do anything while killing five enemies.

What do you get for doing the dailies in the multiplayer zone?

Like poses for photography.

I see.

There's a stuffed animal that you hold.

There's like a skirt, a shirt, and some shoes.

Okay, so the stuff that you would want from any activity in the game, just annoyingly locked behind the most activity.

But like the poses aren't that great.

Okay.

I don't know.

It's fine.

I mostly meant more why.

The activities are better.

I would not have complaints about the rewards.

I see.

Sorry.

that's what I'm saying.

Is it was more the other way of like, are they even giving anybody anything worth getting to do these for?

You know, I think if you're playing it at this stage, you're probably into the picture-taking element because once you run out of story content, there's not that much else to do other than like run around, put on a cute outfit, and be like, oh, this is nice, click, you know.

So I feel like poses and stuff are good, like animations are a decent reward, but inherently people want clothes most and currency to get clothes.

Right.

And it's definitely falling a little bit short there.

That's a bummer.

Well, they shouldn't have gotten rid of fashion omelos either.

That's another thing I just want to say.

That core conceit at the beginning was so cool, and then you were like, yeah, yeah, but they got rid of that.

Yeah.

Fashion is painful.

Fashion is changing.

Let that be the thing.

I guess I don't know that she was being tortured, but she was chained up.

Simply imprisoned.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's my Omelis 2: is we fixed it.

We just have to lock the kid in solitary.

There's no torture anymore.

It's we fixed it.

Um, speaking of multiplayer stuff, I wanted to quickly shout out some time I spent with the Ark Raiders

tech test, technical test 2, or whatever it was.

Ark Raiders is a

multiplayer extraction shooter.

Maybe you've fucking heard of them because there's non-stop now.

We're in the moment of everyone trying to crack whether or not one of these is going to like go big.

It's by Embark Studios, who released the finals back in 2023, which is a kind of tournament-focused first-person shooter with like a lot of mobility.

Also, speaking of that,

is that still running or is that closed?

You know, great question.

I think it still exists.

It seems like it's.

Wait, is that the one that had the AI?

It is the one that had the AI voice acting stuff, which I think that they said was temporary until they got real stuff.

But I do think that that is still the...

Yes,

what they say on the Steam page is during the development process, we may use procedurally and AI-based tools to assist with content creation.

In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.

Examples include voice over audio, where we utilize text-to-speech tools to, for instance, generate the audio of in-game commentators.

They should have just hired someone to do temp voice stuff for that game.

That's not, it's expensive, but it's like,

they should have just had devs do it, frankly.

Maybe there's, maybe there's union stuff around that that I don't know about, but they should not have done the AI thing for a public-facing demo.

I know a lot of devs who use computer voice for internal stuff.

Extremely, I would say like the standard.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

To do it internally because you want to have something that you can say, like, does this work work immediately?

Yes or no?

I need to know, does this line work here?

Because I don't want to waste time recording it if we hate it.

100%.

But that should be like a few steps removed from what you're releasing anyway.

So Art Graders does not have that, does not have any AI disclosure on Steam, as far as I can tell.

Who knows?

I've not done a deep dive of it.

I played the demo or the tech test for the final day of the playtest.

I played with some friends.

I played with Will, not that, Will Smith, Will Smith, and Brad Shoemaker from Nextlander.

Yeah, Will Smith.

And I had kind of an incredible time.

You know, I think if you asked me a month ago if I was more excited for Ark Raiders or Marathon, I would have easily said Marathon because of my history with Bungie and kind of like the core aesthetic, you know, design stuff in

Marathon.

Some of which is really, especially the environment design is just so striking.

I think some of the character design doesn't work for me in Marathon.

Some of the character design is giving nft

um but oh but the world design is incredible um and uh and arc raiders kind of has like um

the picture that i give i i i was trying to explain to somebody for arc raiders it feels like the very first level in destiny one the cosmodrome um which is just like post-apocalyptic uh like soviet uh you know space space port um uh but like what if that was the whole game what if the whole game was run down in that way and then also you weren't space magic people.

You were just like person with a leather jacket.

Or, I don't know, you start with like a, almost like a one-piece, like, not a flight suit, but like an

overall, an overall or a coverall, which is which?

I think they're kind of interchangeable.

The sleeved one.

That's a cover.

Coverall.

I think that's what covers you all.

An overall goes over all your other stuff.

A coverall covers up all your other stuff.

So you start with like coveralls or like, you know, kind of like a technician's uniform but very quickly i did unlock like uh it looked like i was like coming back from the fc barcelona game or like about to go to a rave in barcelona type look uh so there's like some fun fashion stuff there but uh it's just like uh it is a multiplayer game it's pvpve there are robots that you're fighting there are also other players i had kind of a shockingly good time there's so much breadth in the player expressivity uh in terms of interesting tools and weird gadgets to use um you know there is uh you know an example a very easy example for this was just like we're trying to get to a point

Okay, let me actually zoom back really quick and give it the various high level of what an extraction shooter is.

An extraction shooter is a multiplayer game where you are going into a map.

There are, there tend to be enemy like carrot NPCs, and there also are other players, and you're going in to like get gear and extract with it, hence extraction shooter.

They have, you know, I'd say that the kind of big wave of them started with the division one, which had a multiplayer mode in the dark zone where you did some extraction style stuff, and then really blew up, I'd say, about five years ago, give or take, with Escape from Tarkov and Hunt Showdown, which both had similar aspects of that.

I'd say Tarkov, probably the more definitive one in terms of like, oh, you lose all your stuff unless you put it in the special bag that you have.

And then you get to take anything in your special bag, you get to take back, even if you die.

A lot of those things are here.

There's a lot of stuff in this that immediately makes it a little more, I think, player-friendly.

There is a skill tree that you're putting points into that includes things like how quickly you can loot play, you know, things, how much noise you make, all sorts of like more permanent progression.

You also, there's also like a lot of crafting in between matches that allows you to not feel like you've made such a loss if you, for instance, lose a really cool gun because you got killed.

Um, uh, the stuff that I think is really sharp about this game is that the sum of the stuff that you can craft and find gives you a lot of different kind of verbs.

So for instance,

early on, a thing I started getting were like keys, and those keys would open special doors on certain maps to like special loot areas.

Like, oh, this opens a supply depot inside of the launch facility in the spaceport.

Okay, I mean, if we can find the supply room, then we can get all this cool stuff.

And then that stuff ends up kind of linking up because, for instance, you get kind of you land in a zone and you're like, okay, let's, let's, what we're going to focus on is getting across the map and getting to that supply depot.

Cool.

But that supply depot was like low, like another level down on the ground.

We're on top of a huge cliff.

How do we get down there?

And so we'll look at the map.

Okay, we go around.

We could find like a stairwell back there or a long ladder.

But like, oh, actually, Brad brought the zip line that he can set up and just shoot from the top of the, like the dam that's looking down into the valley and just like instantly zip line down there.

Cool.

Okay.

You get there and you know, maybe you know you're being chased by some other players or some of these big robots.

Some of these robots are like gigantic screen-filling spider robots or flying rocket launching, you know, hover drones and shit.

You're like, okay, we have to, we have to get in here and be safe because we're being pursued.

One of the other gadgets you can get is like a thing that like permanently, or it might not be permanently, it might be weapons that can break it, but like locks the door, like jams the door up behind you so no one else can come in after you.

And all those little gadgets end up creating little story moments when you tell the, the, when you like finish the game you will have a thing or a session you will have a thing to tell somebody about what happened in a way that is like narratively explicable and clear uh and i contrast this like playing og fortnite or not og fortnite geez uh because og fortnite of course uh fortnite survive what was it survive the storm no what was it actually called

oh i don't remember janine was the biggest fan of survive the storm fortnite something the storm

yeah what was it called

oh this is brutal it's brutal I can't even just find it on a single search.

I have to do a second search.

But it's not, it's not.

Oh, man.

What was it actually?

Save the world.

It was save the world.

Or maybe that's just what they called it later.

No, that was, I think that was like the slogan.

I think it's.

Oh, Survive the Storm was an event in Save the World.

There we go.

There we go.

Yeah.

Anyway, anyway,

the.

I'm like way off now.

I've started to think about Fortnite.

When Fortnite Battle Royale hit, I remember being like, I can see why people love this, but like, it's hard for me to tell stories about what happens because like, and then I built seven walls and like a two tower, a two-level tower.

It's not exactly compelling, narrativization, but like...

Brad and Will got trapped at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

There was a guy at the top of the elevator shaft throwing grenades down at them and like shooting down at them, but they couldn't get the angle on each other.

And then I like took a zipline up through the elevator shaft to the top where I distracted him.

And then the automated turret came on and was shooting at both of us.

You can, like, spin that yarn in this in a way that I think is my favorite thing about this type of video game.

And then they add to that the stakes that come from playing one of these.

I just think it's really, it was, it was shockingly good.

And I left that tech test feeling like, one, I wish I could play a lot more of this.

I would love to stream some of it whenever it comes back.

And then, two, like, oh, this might have the, this might have what it needs to actually hit with a wider audience than just the sort of die-hard uh folks and obviously there's gonna be stuff that i think will always make it hard to truly hit you know i had a really great session or like a uh not a whole session but like a run end with getting to uh different extraction games have different extraction mode like like how do you leave the level some of them are like ending a hitman level and it's like you have to get to one of the edges the edge points of the map and like walk out one of those you have to like wait for a gate to open up or something in In this, there's kind of two main ones.

One is you can find a key that will open up a sort of

almost like a giant bunker,

you know, door and then go down a ladder back into the vast underground city that all the humans live in now that the Terminator is happening up on the top level.

Or there are these like elevators that have a sort of

almost like a pillbox, like a metal pillbox shape.

And you can call for one of those elevators.

It'll take like 90 seconds to show up.

And then once it it shows up, you can go in and hold a button down to go back down to base and get all the loot that you've that you've taken.

And there was one time when it was like there was another guy there, and I like did the proximity chat thing to be like, Are you cool?

Are you cool?

Are you are we are we cool?

Is everything okay?

Don't shoot me, I'm just trying to extract.

And then we did, we like shot the robot drones, and we both extracted, we weren't on the same team, and that felt great.

But also, it is always scary to go on to voice comms with anyone on the internet.

Uh, It is like, I can't wait to have a slur hurled at me.

And so, you know, to some degree, I think there will always be a barrier of entry to these games.

This is a totally understandable barrier of entry, but I do think it might have the juice in a way that I could imagine it plays so well to an audience, which is something I don't think Tarkov does.

It's something I don't, I don't think that the Division Dark Zone necessarily did.

And so I think that that alone could make it, you know, it's a sort of game that there's a giant spider robot.

And even even though it's PVPVE, sometimes all 16 players on the map decide we're going to take down this spider robot, and that's like a cool bit.

That's a cool thing to see.

People are going to want to see their favorite streamer do it.

And almost just from an academic perspective, I'm like, I can't wait to see this come out.

I can't wait to see all these companies that are chasing the extraction shooter release their games fully so we can see if the audience is actually there for it or if this is like a designer sicko thing, you know?

Sometimes like everybody in video games starts playing a thing and everyone tries to like chase that idea.

And it's like, sorry, this is

you like this idea because you think about games all day, but the audience isn't there for it really.

And I'm curious to see if this ends up being the one that can breach that, you know, and get across the line, you know?

Whenever

a new PvPV shooter comes out that like people are really into,

I think back to the bad old days where the stories that came out of these were like a bunch of me and a bunch of random people decided to have a truce,

but then

one guy found a gun and then he made the other guy drink gasoline.

Right, like the Daisy era.

Yeah.

Oh, you don't know that stuff from Daisy.

I know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's how it used to be.

I never played Daisy.

Oh my god.

I recommend everyone go listen to the old Idol Thumbs episodes about Daisy because that's exactly the shit.

Janine just said a thing that's like 100%,

you know, where like,

you would get.

I thought we were cool, but now I'm being held at gunpoint

and stripped of all of the gear that I've collected.

And then like they're going to drive me into the woods and leave me there.

That's what it used to be.

That's what it used to be.

That was, that was.

Kids don't know these days.

Yeah.

Kids don't know.

Yeah.

They're used to Sabrina Carpenter dancing on a rooftop with Sabrina Carpenter.

That's right.

They've never had Sabrina Carpenter make them drink gasoline.

Some of them wish they had, though, which I, you know,

my child.

Final other thing I wanted to shout out, which, you know, I don't want to actually say too much about it.

I think I mentioned it actually on maybe an earlier episode, but Despalote is out

by

Julian Cordero, Sebastian Valboena, and published by Panic.

It is a first-person

independent game about

a

kind of like growing up

in Ecuador, the year that they are trying to qualify for the World Cup in the, I want to say it's the early 90s and not the late 80s.

I'm pretty sure it's the early 90s.

And it is, sorry, it's neither of those.

It's 2001.

It's the early 2000s, in fact.

It is a really stylish first-person.

I'm going to use the word documentary here because I think there's a lot of documentarian maneuvers happening in Despolote.

It's D-E-S-P-E-L-O-T-E.

It is a game where you are running around in a world that is kind of like various types of monochrome, you know, reds or greens or blues, but otherwise just kind of dark.

And then you're like kicking a soccer ball around.

You're listening to your parents have a conversation about Ecuadorian film.

You are taking your little sister on a walk through the park, all while in the background, Ecuador tries to contest for placement in the World Cup, a year after them having a sort of surprising win in speed walking in the Olympics.

And so suddenly there's a sort of Ecuadorian moment for the folks there where they're like, oh, wow, we could exist on the national stage via the international stage via sports in a way that we didn't think we could.

And it's a, you know, it's a game about being a child and being, you know, kind of bumping into the adult world, trying to make sense of what it means to be from a place, trying to understand, you know, what a family is.

It's fairly short.

I think I played through the whole thing in about two hours give or take um and there are some some really

really cool visual and narrative maneuvers uh especially towards the end of the game that i think it's the first time i've seen some of that stuff in a video game um uh you know the whole thing is narrated uh in a way that is again

drawn from the history of documentaries the history of film uh and there's stuff that couldn't exist in the history or in in a film version of this story.

You know, this is not a game where I played it and said, why was this a game and not just a movie?

This is a game that I played it and went, not only is it a game about a game, which is soccer, not is it only a game that's drawing on documentaries, but it's a game that like takes advantage of being a game in some really unique ways.

I really love it.

It's, I want to say, 15 bucks on Steam.

Really, really worth it.

So shout out to Despilotec.

Yeah, I've been so curious.

Oh, yeah, please, definitely.

If you're curious at all, give it it a shot.

It's really good.

Long time since I played this sort of like first-person narrative game where I was like, shit, damn, cool.

It does the thing that it needs to do, which is like puts you in the moment of like

the thing that works for you, I guess, the best in games like that is when I am saying, what do I do?

At the exact same time that the character is saying, what do I do?

Or the person, like, you're in that moment of just like, wait, should I

go home now?

I don't know if I should, I kind of don't want to go home, but it is late.

The bit, the bit, I know you watched me play some of this, Janine, back a while ago, and

there's a moment where your mom is like, no, whatever you do, don't get dirt on your clothes.

We have to go to a wedding later.

And I was like, I'll be fine.

Cat, I was not fine.

That's exactly what I mean.

Like it just, it really puts you in the, in the thing of like, well, you're a kid with time to kill.

Yeah.

You're in your nice clothes.

God.

The stuff that it doesn't.

Everyone's into soccer.

Again, I don't want to get too many.

I don't want to get like, it's not spoilery, but I don't want to give away

too many of the beats.

I think it's like experiment, hitting them yourself is really good.

But the way it plays with time and not really knowing how long an hour is, how long is your parent going to be away?

How long do you have to wait before you get to go do the thing that you want to do?

Because someone's running errands and you're just a kid along for the ride, you know?

That stuff is fantastic.

Needing to like figure out what time it is by going to like check the clock in the in the park plaza or like look at the go to like walk by the electronics store and look in to see what the TVs say the time is.

It's really interesting.

I think it's a I think it's a really, really

smart game that is going to be one of those things I think ends up inspiring, which are people to make similar stuff

simply by the way that it tackles some some interesting ideas that I think had not really found their way into

games quite yet in terms of how would I tell that, how would I want to tell that story?

I think it cracks some of that in a way.

So, Despalote out now, 15 bucks.

Really great.

We got a question.

We never said that we have an email for questions.

We do.

It is questions at sidestory.show.

I think this person just sent it to the Friends at the Table account.

Right now, the questions at sidestory.show email just goes there.

It just like redirects there.

So I don't think this person just like figured that out.

I think they just sent it to our normal friends at the table email.

I'm going to read it because I think it actually hits on some stuff that we've already talked about today, both in terms of

kind of infinity nikki stuff, some Echo Point Nova Rogue stuff,

and just kind of like broader character building type things.

This comes in from Nelson from Seattle who says, hi, Sidewinders, which is that

what we are?

That's interesting.

That's fun.

That's a kind of snake that leaves really cool tracks.

It does do that.

Yeah.

Sidewinders.

If we were Jack going to be okay with that.

Oh, good thought.

I think Jack is hypothetical.

A snake in conversation is not the snake in the grass.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Hi, Sidewinders.

I have a game design question related to some stuff you discussed in your first episode.

Sorry for the length.

I like, I'm skipping the TLDR version of this.

I like when games feel personalized, an experience I can call my own.

I think gacha can really provide that.

In a gacha system, what I get in my collection is what

I have to work with.

Sorry, what I get is in my collection and what I have to work with.

I might influence what I might roll for, but I never have everything.

In most games, I can either spend enough time to get the rare drops needed for something, or I can choose what I get.

However, someone else can play the game and make the same choices and or grind for those same drops.

I think that there's something special about the limitations that gacha could provide, but I don't think most games quite catch that.

Some games give equipment with random modifiers, but that can sometimes feel like you are arbitrarily picking the best numbers and are being requested to grind to use the build you like, or that the variety is meaningless.

Rogue-style games often do this, but the run-based nature means the variety is ephemeral.

D ⁇ D can have stat rolling, but that can result in power imbalances and other frustrations.

The one game that I find captures this feeling of gacha personalization are Nuzlocke randomized Pokemon runs, and that is only done by the player specifically opting in.

As gamers and designers yourselves, are there ways you can think of to tap into that feeling of using the hand you've been dealt?

Any non-payment-driven gotcha games that you think are interesting?

Does this style appeal to you, or do you want everything authored or choice-driven?

Thanks for the new show, Nelson from Seattle.

Uh, thoughts.

I definitely have some

examples here, but there

the thing that's interesting for me is that like some of the qualifications Nelson has, I think, immediately,

you know, I would say, first, for instance, for most people who are playing their first Pokemon game, Pokemon is already like this.

You're already getting

the Pokemon you get from the grass.

And, ooh, it turns out that this is the one I've leveled up.

I don't know.

I don't know about no IVs or Eevees.

All I know about is Eevee, the cool Pokemon, you know?

And like, sometimes you have a Pokemon who just seems to, who just feels better and is stronger.

Exactly.

And that's.

You got one that has the good numbers, but you don't know.

But it's just like, I guess I'm an absolute main now.

Okay.

That's right, exactly.

And I think that was, in some ways, the

initial reason why people really love Pokemon was like, ooh, who's your team?

And yes, there were immediately people who are grinding out and trying to collect them all.

That's like part of the pitch of Pokemon right away.

But the idea of like, who did you have when you faced the Elite Four still did scratch some of this itch even before Nuzlocke.

If anything, I think Nuzlocke is sort of about trying to let expert players recapture some of the amateur

experience of playing those games before you knew too much and before you were devoted to playing them in that other way.

For me, at least, I think that that's what's going on.

Yeah.

Because you can't, it cuts you off at like, you can't grind for the perfect, you know, Doug Trio.

Right.

You get one, and that's your one, and

his name is like Doug Trio spelled D-O-U-G.

That's right, yes.

And that's it.

And if he dies, he dies, you know?

Yep.

Which, I guess, is the second one of these for me is like, I think anything like in the XCOM space, obviously

you are making lots of choices to like create your characters and make certain choices around what their

bonuses are.

But anything that has like a perk system for NPCs, or not NPCs, but for like party members, I think does a lot of good for like, ooh, this is my version of this character.

Like Darkest Dungeon actually scratches this itch for me a little bit, especially because in the middle of a run of a game like that, you're like, shit, who's ready to go?

I don't have my A-team ready.

I only have, you know,

Renault, who has had, you know, spent the last, you know, six weeks in the church trying to pray away his guilt, and it hasn't worked.

And now I got to send him out into the damn Myers or whatever.

So he's going to get crushed, you know?

So I think that game does pretty well with it.

And then there's stuff that just straight up has a sort of gotcha element to it, like Xenoblade chronicles 2 a game that i think yeah that's the one that really jumped to mind for me yeah i think most people remember that system for its uh deeply horny lady design um

so some of the worst and i'm saying worst inside of the subset of things that is horny anime ladies i just don't think they're good designs i think even if you accept the premise

you some of them are really bad but that was a game that did have uh like you could get these things called blades which were sort of like what if pokemon were people or women.

There's a couple of people.

Remember, the dudes look like

they kind of look like enemies in a different JRPG.

They kind of have like that.

I gotta find you an example now, but they had like almost like robot style designs.

Remember, they ended up being, I referenced them a lot in

Partisan because I kind of think that's what the war forms of the branched looked like.

It's just like, look, they're just like people, they're just like metal people, you know?

Yeah,

I'm trying to pull up a picture of this one guy I got in it,

Wolfrick, who is just like a full-on, like, looks like a monster from a, like an endgame monster from a Final Fantasy version.

Oh, yeah, I fought this guy in Final Fantasy.

When I went deep on Final Fantasy XI, I just fought this guy, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's either this or like there's occasionally you get a twink.

Sure, sure, sure.

Yes.

Or

these are the two two types of dudes you find.

Whereas the women you roll are

twisting around themselves so that you can see tits and ass at all times, you know?

Which again, I just don't think those designs hit.

I think if you what you want is a game with hot anime women, there are better options.

Actually, I think 72 is actually kind of good.

Except for this.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of actually really smart gameplay design stuff in that game.

But yeah, so I think that game literally has this.

And actually, so does.

I guess it doesn't actually, because the, I was going to say Grand Blue, Grand Blue, not Versus, but Relink actually doesn't have a gotcha.

You just pick which character you want, but you can only get a few of them during the main campaign.

So that does not actually literally have one.

But yeah, I think anything like that, or anything like Janine, I think a favorite of ours that no one talks about, the Vita RPG Orashika.

Orashika Tainted Bloodlines.

Yeah.

Just a sequel to a game that was never localized that arguably killed

Oh, did it?

That's a shame.

This is great because the other thing I was going to shout out here was another Vita game.

Shout out to the Vita.

Shout out to the Vita.

The best

handheld ever.

Orishika, Wikis RPG, where you

played.

I don't know who you were necessarily,

but you basically had a whole line of characters who were like...

descendants of deities.

You had like demigods, basically, and you had had generation after generation of them.

And so, like, you were, you know, the gods would pop out a new kid, and you'd be like, all right, get to the front of the line, buddy.

Take a look at the kids.

You had a cursed bloodline.

Right, right.

The particular tainted bloodline.

Trying to undo the tainted bloodline.

And in doing that, you're sort of, you win, you get powerful enough that certain gods are like, yeah, okay, I'll have a kid with you.

Yeah.

And then you have that kid and they have, inherit, like, special powers and stuff, and so on and so forth, until you fix it's like a game built around the sort of like shin megami tensei or persona fusion stuff except like a little more eugenicsy because it's human it's a teeny bit but it is it's gods it's mostly gods right um uh but that game i think similarly had like a ooh this one character is unique to my playthrough this is my

you know this character means a lot for my whole run and that's my guy you know

what were you gonna say sylvie what vita game came

I was.

When we got this question, I was trying to think of more of the

unique playthrough aspect that

spacing on the name of the person.

From Seattle.

Yeah, that Nelson was asking about where it's like, oh, yeah, in a Nuzlocke run, for example, like your character, like your party is going to be

set for a degree, but then change, and it'll always be sort of like a unique run-through with these characters.

There was a game I played on the Vita called Lost Dimension, and it's like a tactical RPG, and its big hook was that you were basically in between missions playing a game of werewolf or Morphe with your

characters that you have, and whoever is betraying you is different every time, and so like, like every new campaign.

And so it will, I don't know, I admittedly did not end up finishing it because it just, like, at a certain point was a bit too, uh,

I don't want to say slog, but it was, like, a little too, too, um, samey for me at a certain point.

And also, when someone you really like gets taken out in one of those games,

it can really kill your enjoyment.

Um,

but the aspect of you have to vote off basically you have to one convince the NPCs to vote the way that you want them to vote.

And two, you have to, like, vote off someone every chapter or whatever.

Well, like, it means by necessity, it's going to end up feeling different when you play through.

That's the sort of thing I was thinking of.

But it's hard to think of gotcha in a single player,

like,

a single-player experience because it is so that isn't exploitative because it is kind of that by nature.

Or because in something like Xenoblade, you could just grind out more draws right it's not like you're if what you've done is looked up and I think this is actually kind of a for me subtext of this this question is you could give yourself this experience in a lot of different games simply by not knowing anything about them

the the like I have a personal story that's that feels like it's mine happens in a lot of games if you're not it happens in Baldur's Gate 3 if you're not reading a strategy guide to learn where to go get the cool sword you know, or if you're not, you know what I mean?

Like, I think if all of us sat down to go play Baldur's Gate 3 by ourselves and then we talked about the experience of playing it, there would be some overlap.

We might all be like, oh, I got this cool knife for a Sarion, but I almost, I would guarantee that one of us has some build or some weapon that the other one's missed.

And then we're like, ooh, that made, that was like so important for my run of da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

I mean, even earlier today, when we were talking about Claire Obscure, there was overlap with like, oh, the two of you both have built a character out for a particular stance, but there were still other things where you're like, oh, but I could do this.

I could, you know, even just playing a game like that, there are so many options available that I think, even if it's not literally the randomization of gotcha, it still hits like that.

You know, it still hits like, this is your story.

The other thing, Dre, I was talking about, like, completely missed the thing that I'm building one of my characters around in Clare Obscure, like we talked about, and that's like given it a whole different feeling, I imagine.

I don't know any minds.

The other thing is,

and I mentioned this when we were sort of discussing this question

before,

was

randomizer mods, like mods or ROM hacks or things like that.

Things that basically make it so whenever you get an item, it is a completely different item than what it is supposed to be.

There's a lot of these for like fromsoft games, right?

There's a lot of them for

the early Legend of Zelda games.

Things that basically, again, I think it kind of hits that thing that you mentioned with the Nuzlocke runs where it's like for people who specifically are used to overthinking and over planning and like knowing something inside and out, it adds an element of being able to play as if you are just a person who's playing the game sight unseen, no access to any other information.

Just like, okay, I got this thing.

I have to work with it.

Yep.

Totally.

Yeah.

And let me be an advocate for the humble roguelike, which I know that Nelson wrote it.

Nelson explicitly said like the ephemeral part of those makes that less doesn't hit the same way.

Some of those have some pretty long runs.

I think like if you're deep into a Caves of Cud run, or if you're playing something like Caves of Cud or Dwarf Fortress Adventure mode with the settings set so that you can save your game or Caves of Cud specifically has a mode that saves anytime that you're at a like a town or any other type of settlement, like you're going to end up with a character whose build is completely different than someone else who's playing.

And not only because Caves of cut is filled with like random mutation moments but like uh simply because of what gear you find and other sorts of randomization around that you know um you know i think that it is the thing that's that's really nice about the uh the gacha mechanic as a as a kind of coalescence of this idea is you get a whole ass character from a gacha it's a it's a whole the character is if you get a character who has a big claymore and they're like a slow moving character but they can like turn turn into fast mode or something, that's going to define how you play the game because that's who your character is.

Versus if you get someone who's like a fly-around shoot-magic character in some gacha game, like I get it.

The fact that those are all bundled like that is different than getting a Borderlands gun that shoots rockets,

but like it's a submachine gun that shoots rockets or something.

I get it.

Or playing Sheeran the Wanderer and finding a bunch of staves that let you do teleportation tricks tricks or whatever.

But I do think that there is something to be said about those little things slowly bundling up until suddenly you've realized, oh, I'm building towards a particular type of sub-character, you know, or type of character instead of it coming kind of pre-grouped the way a gotcha character might.

Didn't, did Grand Blue Fantasy Relink have clicked on?

That's what I was saying earlier.

It doesn't.

No, you just, you get tokens and buy the character you want.

It does not actually, you don't roll to get a character, which I think was the right call for that game because

I mean, to some degree, you're rolling dice because you don't get to test the characters before you buy them.

You just get to see what their portraits are and can read a little bit about what they do.

But I definitely unlocked some characters and was like, eh, I don't really like how they play.

I like that game a lot, though.

Any other thoughts on this?

Any other examples of this?

I thought of another one, which is the

an actual gacha game that has a mode that is outside of the gacha, sort of convolaria.

Yeah, sort of convolaria.

i forgot about sort of where there's there's like a mode where like you can you can

bring in

like one or two or whatever of your gacha of the characters you've gotten from the gacha but otherwise all of your equipment and stuff is just unique to that mode it's what you get in that mode and it's a completely closed off like system without any like currency or anything like that that game yeah that game's got some yeah for people who don't know sort of convolaria is like a tactics tactical rpg in the vein of something like final fantasy tactics where there is like a totally like standard daily gotcha free-to-play type mode that you could spend probably hundreds and hundreds of hours in.

And then there's also just a mode that is its own tactical RPG that is like, like you said, Janine, kind of like hermetically sealed from the rest of the game.

I think they maybe let you bring more characters in now.

I think I saw that at some point from your gacha, but you don't need to at all.

And you get a bunch of characters through the game, including from in that mode, you can go hire random mercenaries from the bar, which is sort of like an in-game gotcha that's completely just in-game currency stuff, you know.

Um, sort of Convalaria is kind of good.

I mean, I should go back to playing some sort of Convalaria.

I don't know.

I'm thinking about it, yeah.

All right, I think that's gonna do it for this run of side story.

It's not a run, really, we're not a run-based podcast.

Yeah, we've been talking a lot about runs today.

You're not wrong.

Uh, as well as podcast, I got a fire sword,

Just so everyone knows.

I haven't been flaunting it, but you know.

Amazing.

We, as always, are supported by you over at friendsofetheetable.cash.

If you support us at the $10 level, you'll get access to our outward Let's Play.

We have four episodes of that out now.

And I gotta say, I think my favorite bit I've done as an editor is in this fourth bit

or the fourth episode so far.

We gotta get back and play some more soon because, I mean, actually, because we're out of footage, we've just played more But also because I just like I can't stop thinking about it.

I really love that game It has been a joy to play so people should go support us there and get access to that you can also get access to bonus content for media club plus

which is the show Sylvie that you're on what's the most recent bonus thing for media club plus

let me think we it's it's been kind of like a

We've recorded a Dragon Ball Z bonus that I don't know if it's up or I don't think it'll be up by the time this is done, but we've covered a lot of Dragon Ball Z just to sort of expose the for anyone who's not familiar, Jack, who has been, like I said, been on Side Story before.

You should hopefully be familiar with our friend Jack Takeet,

has never seen Hunter Hunter or much Shounen anime.

So one of the big sort of missions for the season of Media Club Plus was exposing them to sort of seminal shounen stuff.

So the bonuses have been the original Dragon Ball, we did some JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 4, which are some very fun episodes, and a lot of Dragon Ball Z.

We've done both Frieza, Saga, and I think the upcoming one is Sell Saga stuff.

So if you want to check those out, they're available the same price as any of the Friends of the Table bonus campaign stuff.

I think it's the $5 tier for that.

Speaking of people who haven't really worth checking out.

Speaking of people who haven't seen things, you and Keith have also been playing through 999, which you've beaten at this point, and Last Reward, which you're maybe eight or nine episodes into at this point.

uh yeah we really need to get back to that my

i've been so thrown off by personal life stuff but i'm dying to because i've played those yes keith has keith has not

and it has been a joy getting keith's reactions to the way that kotaru ichikoshi writes um oh are you playing yeah what's it i've not played hundred line i want to um i'm just

Nobody come for me.

I'm kind of a dang and rampa hater.

I'm just like, it's just never been for me.

And so, like, that's a barrier that I'm trying to push through.

Wildermyth.

We're in Wildermyth.

Wildermy, Nelson, go play Wildermyth.

Wildermyth.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

You're so

shouting out for

us and realize we have the Wildermyth.

Let's play them.

Oh, wait, we have one more episode to do for it.

Right here.

Right there.

But people should go.

Nelson, you should go play that.

Everyone should go play Wildermy.

I'm a Wildermyth booster for sure.

yeah uh and as always i'd also love if you would go to your podcast platform of choice and leave us a review i think uh that it is hard to overstate how important it is to get reviews for uh a podcast that you're trying to get off the ground like this um it is it is such a key way to get the show in front of new people you can only reach your own audience so much uh and even if you just say it over and over again like it's limited but because of the way discovery works on the internet and especially on these apps, it's useful to have the

reviews.

It'll help boost it to the top of the charts and it'll help get it more attention.

And hey, tell your friends about it

big time too.

Again, that email address is questions at sidestory.show.

Before we leave, we do have one more question.

And actually,

I'm going to lead into it with a review that prompts.

Let's see here.

The title of

this review is I,

and it's written by C-G-I-D-G-H-U-D-D-H-D-J-X-F-J-X-F-J-J-D-N-B.

Probably a new account, I think.

Maybe they made an account to make this review.

And they said the I stands for Inca.

It's the secret third game from the Inca franchise for the CDI.

Oh, my God.

Sophie, do you know about the upcoming Fantasy Life game?

Yes, of course I do.

What's the name of it?

Isn't Isn't it Fantasy Life?

Isn't it Fantasy Life?

I was listening to the side story that you listened to.

Y'all recorded last, but I didn't get to that segment quite yet.

We made a discovery during that segment, which is that the I stands for some stuff.

What is it?

I don't want to re-do.

We want to know.

You want to answer.

Ask this question.

So there's, yeah, the I stands for four things, but they've only explained what three of those things are.

Yes.

we don't need to go over it again.

Island, internet, and individual.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they've also said that it stands for a fourth thing that will be revealed.

What do you think it is?

What do you think that I stands for?

I think it's like it's they're being clever, and it's I, like, E-Y-E.

Ooh,

is the fourth I.

Interesting.

Yeah.

What do you think that means?

Hmm.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I thought it.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Realize, realize, realize.

I like it.

Good guess.

I like this.

I don't remember what our guesses were, Janine, but we'll have to go back and check.

My new one is internship.

That's my new one that I'm

hoping for.

Like two hours into the game, you get an internship.

And that's the fourth I for this game.

We have an internship since then.

Great.

Yeah.

You start as a blacksmith and you don't get paid for 10 hours.

God.

All right.

That's going to do it for us.

Thank you so much for listening, As always,

what's that thing that we say at the end of the episode?

To be continued.